The Vatican’s Philosophy of Language
The doctrine of papal infallibility is a prime example of how authoritative Catholic teaching presupposes philosophical premises distinct from matters of faith and morals. This particular doctrine requires, for example, a certain philosophical conception of how meaning is expressed through discourse. The coherence of infallibility requires that language function in a certain way.
What is that way? The CDF document Mysterium Ecclesiae spells out the philosophy of language underlying the doctrine of papal infallibility. In its insistence that the church’s infallibility not be falsified, the document distinguishes between the dogmatic formulas, whose meaning is determinate and unalterable, and the changeable conceptions of a given epoch, which may be but needn’t be used by the church to enunciate the truths expressed by the dogmatic formulas. In making this distinction, the church indicates that there are two types of language: the determinate and unalterable on the one hand, and the approximate and changeable on the other.
Dogmatic formulations may bear traces of the latter kind of language, but these traces do not fundamentally change the meaning of the formulation, even though “the meaning of the pronouncements of faith depends partly upon the expressive power of the language used at a certain point in time and in particular circumstances.” However imperfectly it may express some dogmatic truth, the dogmatic formula remains forever suitable for communication. The CDF insists that the faithful shun the opinion that dogmatic formulas cannot signify truth in a determinate way, but can do so only by means of approximations.
Infallibility only makes sense if the infallible authority is capable of signifying truth and meaning in a determinate, unalterable way. Approximations leave room for fallibility, skepticism, suspicion, and for distance from the truth. We need to ask, however, if the understanding of language sketched in Mysterium Ecclesiae is tenable.
I’m not sure it is, at least not exactly as expressed. I’ve long held the positions that meaning is both produced and disclosed by language and that the boundaries of meaning (definitions) are the result of choice. I’ve shunned the view that truth can be possessed, arguing instead that it can only be pursued. It would seem that I’m decidedly in the camp that says truth can be signified only by approximations. And I am. And yet I do not deny magisterial infallibility.
Where Mysterium Ecclesiae separates determinate language and approximate language, I see them as potentially the same. Specifically, language can be determinate in terms of reference—that outside of language to which language points—but at best approximate in terms of sense—that which is contained in the linguistic expression. Therefore, the church’s dogmatic formulas are both determinate and approximate: determinate because there is a disclosure of a reality beyond the formula, and approximate because the formula, however clear and concise, involves the subjective creation of meaning. The Catechism buttresses this notion when it says that we don’t believe in formulas, but in the realities they express, which faith allows us to touch.
A question lingers: is the difference between my philosophy of language and the one implied in Mysterium Ecclesiae sufficient enough that I should be led to a different conception of infallibility? I’m inclined to say yes, but I hasten to add that my doing so is in keeping with the route proposed by the CDF: a dogmatic truth may be expressed at first incompletely, but receive a fuller and more perfect expression in light of a broader context of faith and human knowledge.
Alternatively, my philosophy of language may be bogus.
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Kyle,
Bravo, pretty darn interesting for those interested in Catholic things! I am a little surprised that you have not grappled with notions implied by the works of the Angelic Doctor on language. For surely Aeterni Patris was just the culmination of a way of thinking about these things that lead to “infallibility” in the first place. The Angelic Doctor’s formulation can’t be avoided in such a conversations. In that view faith should inform reason, and reason is what an analysis of language is in the modern sense. But, lo, by orthodox Catholic lights faith never changes, even though history says otherwise. Thus, the real problem with it is that allows no way to introduce anything new that comes from our world substantively into the formula. Grafted onto this is a side history of Nominalism, almost jerry-rigged to it, which the Church never really got around to rejecting utterly, and embraced at times. It add a big wrinkle. Are those words just names we give for realities which are ineffable?? Or do they signify something quasi-determinate?? In between those two simplistic summary- questions is a vast world of parsin’ for theologians. Again, the problem is if people divorce language from reality entirely we end in nihilism. But if we give it short shrift we are kinda dead. I think this is precisely the impasse the RC Church is at. One needs to accept the inevitable change of history to not always get bogged down by such things.
I am a little surprised that you have not grappled with notions implied by the works of the Angelic Doctor on language.
I’d say wait a little while, but whenever I publish my readings of the good doctor, the Thomists circle in for the kill, and my overarching point gets lost in the commotion.
Kyle,
Well they didn’t run the Inquisition for nothing. On the other hand, ascribing the likes of the War on Terror to them, as the new book on the “Holy Office” does, is ridiculous. And certainly did deserve the bad review in the Times which it got yesterday. Rather, in general the vibe of Thomism in general culturally has been more fuddy-duddy than anything threatening.
Interesting set of questions. I’m not convinced that Mysterium Ecclesiae does distinguish between two kinds of language. It’s not the dogmatic formula that remains unaltered and unalterable but the interpretation — that is, “they remain forever suitable for communicating this truth to those who interpret them correctly.” Thus the point seems rather that these formulas have a determinate aspect, i.e., what they are actually talking about, which always remains what it is, and if the meaning of the formula is not changed or misunderstand, which the formula determinately identifies; and an indeterminate aspect, i.e., the changeableness of linguistic conventions. I’m not sure how this interpretation would meet up with your own suggested philosophy of language.
The document applies “determinate” and “unalterable” to more than the interpretation:
As for the meaning of dogmatic formulas, this remains ever true and constant in the Church, even when it is expressed with greater clarity or more developed. The faithful therefore must shun the opinion, first, that dogmatic formulas (or some category of them) cannot signify truth in a determinate way, but can only offer changeable approximations to it, which to a certain extent distort of alter it; secondly, that these formulas signify the truth only in an indeterminate way, this truth being like a goal that is constantly being sought by means of such approximations. Those who hold such an opinion do not avoid dogmatic relativism and they corrupt the concept of the Church’s infallibility relative to the truth to be taught or held in a determinate way.
Such an opinion clearly is in disagreement with the declarations of the First Vatican Council, which, while fully aware of the progress of the Church in her knowledge of revealed truth,(38) nevertheless taught as follows: “That meaning of sacred dogmas…must always be maintained which Holy Mother Church declared once and for all, nor should one ever depart from that meaning under the guise of or in the name of a more advanced understanding.”(39) The Council moreover condemned the opinion that “dogmas once proposed by the Church must, with the progress of science be given a meaning other than that which was understood by the Church, or which she understands.”(40) There is no doubt that, according to these texts of the Council, the meaning of dogmas which is declared by the Church is determinate and unalterable.
Yes, it applies to to the meaning, i.e., the interpretation. I don’t see anything in this that changes anything. Unless you are suggesting that formulas have meanings that are independent of correct interpretation? But I don’t think that’s in view here.
Hmm. First, I would distinguish the meaning of a formula with the meaning of an interpretation of that formula’s meaning. The two meanings are related, but distinct. The meaning is expressed by the formula; the interpretation is offered by the listener or reader and is, really, a new formula or text.
Second, I would say that formulas can have meaning beyond what is given expression by correct interpretations. Correct doesn’t mean exhaustive.
I’m itching to jump in, but having too much trouble grasping your point! : )
Ditto!
If I’m reading correctly, I think the point is that language cannot adequately express the completeness of a particular truth – only approximate it – and therefore an infallible pronouncement, which requires a degree of certitude, is ostensibly very difficult to reconcile with the medium in which it is expressed.
i.e. If the medium is the message, then is an infallible pronouncement a contradiction in terms?
Dan’s on the right track. You can’t separate form and context, medium and message, and so language can at best be approximate. The statements Mysterium Ecclesiae makes about language don’t hold water, but all is not lost because language, in its capacity to refer beyond itself, can still disclose reality in a determinate way. Where the CDF document separates determinate and approximate language, I see them as one in the same and not in conflict, because language has both sense and reference.
Same here – I did not get it – :) certainly reads and sounds awfully smart and thoughtful.
Ah, but it could be smart and thoughtful sounding rubbish. ;-)
This would seem to be a discussion that yearns to branch off into an explanation of why direct revelation is the optimal access to Truth, and why art, rather than discursive rhetoric, is the best way to communicate that kind of transcendent experience to others.
At some point soon, I’d like to return to my pet theme of the “truth” of art.
@ Kyle –
Please do!
:)I am looking forward to that one – than again if you start out with ‘truth’ instead of truth you certainly give yourself plenty of wiggleroom.
Thus whatever emerges from that discussion will likely be words shifted this way or that way – the Truth will be safe from being discovered.
Unless we can only reach Truth via “truth.”
Kyle – as you can imagine I will not hold my breath.
Since even the soundest intellectual framework we humans so far have come up with – Science – is by definition a constant refinement and approximation of observed reality – a methodology with no ambitions to settle on a final truth -thus it is a bit of a grand illusion at best and rather illfaited hubris at worst in my view when folks like us -who happen to enjoy musing about this or that – expect anything other than emotionally and aestatic appealing ‘truth’ .
:) After all this here is yet another glorious technological enhanced exercise in shifting words this way or that way. My above comment very much included.
I wonder, Kyle, if you might be imagining a different issue than ME intends to address. At Rodak’s suggestion, let my start with a narrative rather than dialectic reasoning!
When I studied theology as an undergraduate with Douglas Hall (himself a student of Paul Tillich), he told a story about his ordination. (He is an ordained minister of the United Church of Canada.) When he was ordained, there was much tension in Reformed theological circles about the role of the historic creeds and acceptance of them as a requirement of ordained ministers. This tended to circle around two dogmas, namely, the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection. So, Rev. Hall tells us that when he was examined for ordination, he was asked directly by his examiners whether he believed in the Virgin Birth. “Absolutely,” he replied. He then paused in his telling of the story and got that twinkle in his eye and the little grin he would put on from time to time. He looked at us in the classroom and said, “I’m just glad they didn’t ask me what I think ‘Virgin Birth’ means!”
I take it that the Church is precisely standing against this kind of Tillichian (and in a broader way Liberal Protestant/Catholic Modernist) move to accept historic formulas of the faith (e.g. the creeds, and for Catholics also definitive teachings in the councils, ex cathedra definitions, etc.) while intending by them something quite apart from, indeed something even quite contradictory to, both the plain meaning of the words and the meaning intended by those who formulated the creed/definition/etc. While the Church happily accepts that the mystery, say, of the Virgin Birth is not exhausted by anything we may have said about it, and while indeed it has little precisely to say about the mechanics of it, one cannot meaningfully hold that the dogma is not determinate such that someone who insisted that Jesus was conceived through the physical, marital union of Joseph and Mary, could still happily assent to the dogma of Christ’s Virgin Birth.
Seen in this way, viz. that something can be determinate and unalterable without being, thereby, comprehensive and exhaustive, are the issues Kyle raises here quite as worrisome?
I’d say I’m disagreeing with an issue ME does address by making a point it doesn’t. I agree that there’s a logical compatibility between determinate/unalterable and imperfect (i.e., not comprehensive and exhaustive), but, contra the document, I also hold that determinate/unalterable and approximate are likewise compatible given how language functions. My conclusion is that infallibility can still work even though the sense of language can be at best approximate to the truth.
Eee-gads! Dominic would have us be ensorcelled by “the plain meaning of words”. Since when has the Catholic Church ever been interested in that??
The best demonstration of that is the most important term for Catholic identity itself: Transubstantiation. When it was conceived “substance” had a meaning utterly different than it does today. And yet Catholic intellectuals are very happy to have an essentially “mysterious” and decidedly not “plain” meaning for it in any sense today. In other words, the “plain meanings” of modern physics and technical science, which we all participate in by by watching TV or using a computer or walking with trust on an airplane, are somehow put aside for “mystery” when necessary to make such an un-plain wording, beholden to long lost conceptions, such as “trans-substance”. If this is how plain-ness is used for this central matter, how can it have any clout with more recent matters like the “infallible” expressions of the Pope in Rome??
In my experience “Catholic intellectuals” simply point out that substance stopped meaning what it meant for Thomas already with Scotus (and certainly by Descartes), explain what it did mean for Thomas, and go from there. I.e. transubstantiation makes no sense if one is trying to make it work with a concept of substance that was explicitly rejected in its articulation but has since become the default. Maybe we hang out with different “intellectuals”?
I’ll gladly admit that the reversal of the central term has made things confusing and requires a lot of legwork, not least in terms of ecumenism, but I don’t know which group in the Church is doing what you accuse these “intellectuals” of. Any names?
Now, of course, the claim that bread and wine have become Christ’s body and blood remains mysterious in any case, regardless of the language (plain or esoteric) that one uses to discuss it. It may be a straightforward claim, but so is the claim that God created the universe from nothing. That doesn’t make it unmysterious. Ditto for “Jesus was born of a virgin,” “Jesus died for our sins,” or even , “I love my wife and children.”
Brett,
Well at this point I don’t hang out with any intellectuals who are parsing subtle differences in understanding of transubstantiation. What piqued my interest is the notion that somehow, someway Catholic theology is involved with “the plain meaning of words.” This sounds like a bit of Dominican wishful thinking. The issue becomes important in the sense that a chief part of the Catholic magisterial idea that nothing essential has changed in Catholic doctrine is involved in such sorts of see-saws between appeals to “common sense” and really very abstruse theological explanations.
To wit, the difference between “substance’ in Thomas and Scotus is teeny-tiny compared to what “substance” means today. In fact there are many, many possible conceptions of substance in a contemporary vein that would make the whole notion of “trans” anything absolutely moot. Please note, I am not here to argue that orthodox Catholics should not believe what they want about such matters. Rather simply that the very vast incongruence of terms, requiring quite mysterious explanations, should at the very least cause some modesty about the evidentiary powers of various styles of reasoning which are typically relied on.
I’m all for modesty. But I do want to uphold that we can talk usefully about all kinds of things in plain English. To wit, “This is my body.” Now, in certain circumstances, the “plain” meaning will require explanation, but such needs do not rule out the enduring validity of the original statements.
I also think that, even if the change from Thomas to Scotus looks tiny, it was the decisive one and everyone else has just followed through on it. Once substance itself becomes an accident, the whole system is lost. ;)
A professor of mine once joked that bread and wine are not substances, they’re artifacts.
Brett,
I really don’t want to sound snarky, but if the meaning of “this is by body” were something that could be resolved by “plain” language then the Thirty Years War would not have been fought! In fact the issue is precisely that they have never been plain and always the subject of very heavy philosophical meanings, which as you yourself are highlighting, changed. My side point is that whereas the RC Church previously felt on top of the whole science question, now they just rely on “mystery” when it suits. But claim “reason” when they can. I am not here saying it needs to make sense; just that the whole matter of religious reasons generally, using this as potent indicator, should go down several notches. Let personal religious experience rise up a few notches concomitantly.
Lastly, as I have said before, and I fell does not sink-in somehow. The Catholic Church OFFICIALLY embraced Nominalism at the Council of Constance. And they NEVER got around to officially repudiating it either. So whatever one wants to say about Scotus now in theology schools, a little Church History ought to intervene and cause the queries it should. These matters were never resolved. One could say it is just a collection of approaches, strangely pretending to be a consistent program. A rag and bone shop of the heart, which no one would blame them for personally, becomes a quite strange looking doctrinal vitrine when it is projected in such stentorian ways by the RC Church. I understand that pose is part of its ethos culturally, but in a pluralistic society one cannot blame others for taking it a different way.
@ Kyle –
Is all exegesis, then, just so much straw for the fire?
No. Why would it be?
@ Kyle –
Because, not partaking of certainty, being an incomplete description of reality/truth at best, all any particular grouping of words can do is point towards a thing which cannot ever be fully attained, thus “fueling” endless disputation.
Basically, what has come down to us is the ecclesiastical equivalent of a bunch of academic researchers squabbling over whose results best fit the objective. They publish and they correspond and they hold conferences and make presentations. In the end, the decision on which findings will prevail as the most definitive is more political than it is scientific.The “truth” is decided by the vote of a committee. The average Joe reads about it in National Geographic or Time magazine, or sees it on the History channel, and swallows it whole.
I say that the guy who used “ensorcelled” wins.
Rodak,
…..now where did I put my turban and magic carpet?!
Kyle writes, “In making this distinction, the church indicates that there are two types of language: the determinate and unalterable on the one hand, and the approximate and changeable on the other.”
I don’t see this dichotomy in ME. In response to Brandon you quoted this passage: “The faithful therefore must shun the opinion, first, that dogmatic formulas (or some category of them) cannot signify truth in a determinate way, but can only offer changeable approximations to it, which to a certain extent distort of alter it;…”
But ME is not saying here that dogmatic formulas constitute a distinct type of language called “determinate language”, as if there is something magical in the words by virtue of their having been called “dogmatic”, which is lacking in other kinds of language; nor contrasting them with another distinct type of language called “changeable”.
ME uses the word “changeable” in this context: “[E]ven though the truths which the Church intends to teach through her dogmatic formulas are distinct from the changeable conceptions of a given epoch and can be expressed without them, nevertheless it can sometimes happen that these truths may be enunciated by the Sacred Magisterium in terms that bear traces of such conceptions.”
Here ME is addressing not changeable *language*, but changeable *conceptions* (of a given epoch).
It’s not saying that dogmas are sometimes expressed using changeable language of a given epoch, but rather, that sometimes dogmas are expressed in *terms* that bear *traces* of “changeable conceptions of a given epoch.”
It goes on to say that the dogmatic formulations themselves were and are suitable to communicate revealed truth, even though they may sometimes need “suitable expository and explanatory additions” in order to “maintain and clarify their original meaning”.
An illustration might be the OT scriptures saying that “the sun rose”. That term bears traces of the changeable conception of a given epoch, namely, the conception of the earth being at the center of the universe. Nevertheless, taking that changeable conception into account, the words do convey an event in a determinate manner: The sun rose; day broke; the part of the earth to which the author refers rotated to the point where it entered the light which the sun cast upon the earth; however you want to put it.
I think ME’s point is, that the fact that a term bears traces of a changeable conception, does not render it incapable of conveying a truth in a determinate manner.
Conceptions are formed of language, are they not? ME says as much. Both dogmatic formulas and changeable conceptions express meaning: “dogmatic formulas are distinct from the changeable conceptions of a given epoch and can be expressed without them.” We could also talk of dogmatic conceptions and changeable formulas; both are products of language. ME speaks of two types of language, or, if you prefer, two different kinds of products of language, but is not the difference between formula and conception that matters, but between determinate and changeable.
This reminds me of a discussion my African Christianity class once had. At issue was the way a Nigerian Jesuit, A. Orobator, discussed the Trinity. He pointed that the Father-Son-Spirit model was difficult for locals because they can’t imagine a family without a mother. In response, he proposed interjecting, somehow, a “mother” into the model, in order to better understand the confusing Trinitarian idea that we apply other models to anyway. What was most offending was his talk of the “Trinity” as a symbol of the greater truth that we can’t completely understand. Some of the more orthodox Catholics took this to mean he was denying the Trinity, and the class took off from there.
@ Michael Carper –
The first mistake was probably allowing these people to think of the Trinity as a “family.” That is polytheistic on the face of it–among other things.
Furthermore, there is no need to feel any lack of a heavenly mother figure in Catholicism.
I don’t get the problem.
@Michael Carper
As Carl Jung famously wrote, what else was the infallible proclamation of Pius XII on the Assumption of the Virgin about? It fulfilled a need that the Nigerians you mentioned were responding to. That is what Catholicism was always about. If it is going to mix with fundamentalist purity then the very ethos is lost.
Kyle writes, “Conceptions are formed of language, are they not? ME says as much. Both dogmatic formulas and changeable conceptions express meaning: …”
I would say, rather, that a formula is language that expresses meaning; while a conception is a meaning that is expressed by language.
[continuing the quote above:] “‘dogmatic formulas are distinct from the changeable conceptions of a given epoch and can be expressed without them.’”
This just means that, for example, the meaning of “the sun rose” can be expressed without the changeable conception of the earth being at the center of the universe. The formula is distinct from the conception.
For you to read “dogmatic formulas are determinate, notwithstanding that conceptions change,” as meaning, “some language is of the changeable type and other language is of the unchangeable type,” I don’t think is a valid interpretation of the text.
In fact I don’t think ME is commenting on language per se, as to its changeableness, at all. Rather, it’s making the point that notwithstanding the fact that ideas and understanding change and evolve, previous dogmatic formulas are still capable of expressing meaning in a determinate way, albeit “with suitable expository and explanatory additions that maintain and clarify their original meaning” when needed. It is for this reason that “The faithful … must shun the opinion … that dogmatic formulas (or some category of them) cannot signify truth in a determinate way”.
However, I believe your main point was that language, whether a dogmatic formula or otherwise, is capable of being determinate only when it refers to an objective reality, and otherwise can only be approximate and indeterminate. Therefore you disagree with ME regardless whether it is positing the existence of two distinct types of language. Right?
When ME says that “dogmatic formulas are distinct from the changeable conceptions of a given epoch and can be expressed without them,” it implies that dogmatic conceptions can also be expressed with changeable conception: both dogmatic formulas and changeable conceptions can be used to express meaning. They are what give expression to meaning, so ME is speaking of two types of linguistic expression, two types of language.
Yes, I disagree with ME, specifically with an argument that ME makes in support of magisterial infallibility. However, as a position is different from the arguments for it, my disagreement doesn’t rise to the level of dissent of doctrine.
But it doesn’t say that dogmatic formulas are distinct from the changeable conceptions of a given epoch; it says that the truths expressed by the dogmatic formulas are distinct from the changeable conceptions. This requires no hypothesis of two languages.
Sure it does: unlike the changeable conceptions of a give epoch, which signify truth by way of approximation, dogmatic formulas signify truth in a way determinate and unalterable.
Kyle writes, “… as a position is different from the arguments for it, my disagreement doesn’t rise to the level of dissent of doctrine.”
No, I didn’t mean to imply that it does.
The full sentence:
Finally, even though the truths which the Church intends to teach through her dogmatic formulas are distinct from the changeable conceptions of a given epoch and can be expressed without them, nevertheless it can sometimes happen that these truths may be enunciated by the Sacred Magisterium in terms that bear traces of such conceptions.
(1) This is most naturally read not as contrasting two languages but as contrasting unchangeable truths with changeable conceptions, both of which are distinguished from the language used (= the terms in which the unchangeable truths are enunciated which may also have traces of unchangeable conceptions).
(2) The ‘traces’ here also seems to imply that we aren’t dealing with two species of signification here, one changeable and one unchangeable, but with a claim that in teaching unchangeable truths the language used may itself be more or less changeable, without requiring us to say that the truths are changeable. This fits with what the document just said, which is that since the Church teaches in language, in interpreting Church pronouncements we have to take into account the expressive power of language at the time the pronouncement is made. And it fits with what immediately follows, namely,
In view of the above, it must be stated that the dogmatic formulas of the Church’s Magisterium were from the beginning suitable for communicating revealed truth, and that as they are they remain forever suitable for communicating this truth to those who interpret them correctly. It does not however follow that every one of these formulas has always been or will always be so to the same extent.
This is an interesting passage for this discussion, because it looks very much like the two-language hypothesis requires us to see the document as contradicting itself in two consecutive sentences. But on the one-language hypothesis these two sentences make sense: interpreted correctly the dogmatic formulas forever express truth (because language can enunciate unalterable truth); but formulas may not forever express truth to the same extent (because the very same language can be affected by the changeable conceptions according to which the expressive power of language varies).
The full sentence supports my reading: if the truth the Church intends to teach through her dogmatic formulas can be expressed without the changeable conceptions of a given epoch, then it follows that there must be a language or way of using language that is distinct from and free of the language of changeable conceptions. There is language that signifies determinately, and language that signifies by approximation.
Kyle writes, “Sure it does: unlike the changeable conceptions of a give epoch, which signify truth by way of approximation, dogmatic formulas signify truth in a way determinate and unalterable.”
But ME doesn’t say that changeable conceptions express truth by way of approximation. The fact that a conception of a given epoch is changeable, doesn’t mean that within its own epoch it was indeterminate. That’s ME’s whole point (in section 5 at any event): That even if a dogmatic formula bears traces of a changeable conception, nevertheless it had and can continue to have determinate meaning — “All these things [including changeable conceptions] have to be taken into account in order that these pronouncements may be properly interpreted.” And when properly interpreted, “they remain forever suitable for communicating this truth”.
Kyle writes, “When ME says that ‘dogmatic formulas are distinct from the changeable conceptions of a given epoch and can be expressed without them,’ it implies that dogmatic conceptions can also be expressed with changeable conception: both dogmatic formulas and changeable conceptions can be used to express meaning. They are what give expression to meaning, so ME is speaking of two types of linguistic expression, two types of language.”
It’s apparent that we’re using “conception” in different senses. I don’t believe a conception is an instrument of expression as is a formula, but rather, a thing that is itself expressed by words or formulas. Language is not conception, rather language is a system of communication which communicates conceptions. My quibble with you is that you seem to be equivocating, by making a formula and a conception the same thing, i.e., determinate formula + changeable conception = unchangeable language + changeable language, as if “formula” and “conception” are both equivalent to “language” and thus to each other. I don’t think they are.
I don’t claim expertise in language, but it seems to me that formula is to conception as word is to idea. “Word” is language, “idea” isn’t.
The fact that they both bear some relation to language doesn’t mean “language” may be substituted for either word as desired.
Generally I try to avoid beating dead horses, but since you’re the thread moderator and you’re striking blows right alongside me, I won’t be shy about it. : )