One of the biggest problems is the fact that every word can have thousands of different meanings according to the material the speaker,reader,thinker,etc has at his disposal, not to mention whatever complex associations at work inside him at the moment. It becomes an even bigger problem when we always assume that people are using the same definitions as I am both in daily, practical life and in heated arguments. We only understand other people’s language vaguely or not at all.
This assumption is completely false and only applies to the most practical essence of life. Such as, I'd know that if you talk about how 2 + 2 = 4, we know that we are both talking about the same thing.
But as soon as we leave that and go into loftier spheres, the commonality in language and understanding that you and I have collapses, and we are unconscious of the fact that we do not understand each other. As a result of this illusion, two men can say the same thing with absolute certainty but call it by different names, debate forever without suspecting that they mean exactly the same thing, argue against each other without knowing we are talking about two entirely different topics, or agree with each other without knowing they both mean something completely different.
To illustrate how this is so, lets analyze two common words: “Man” and “God”.
Imagine I am in a conversation with a feminist, a spiritualist, and a scientist. I bring up the phrase “All Men are Good” to refer to all of humanity, as ancient writers often did, and "Good" in the sense that we are, in our essence, inclined to do good. Lets say I don’t feel the need to elaborate on how in this context “Man” means “All of Humanity” because I feel it is obvious.
But everyone in the conversation links the word “Man” from their own accustomed point of view. The Feminist hears the word “Man” and thinks about it in relation to the sexes (Man/Woman), thus my whole idea is immediately made meaningless to him because he immediately thinks, “Oh? just men are good?”. The spiritualist hears the word “Man” and thinks of it as the Immortal Spirit incarnate temporarily as a Man, but is itself not the Man, and thinks “It does feel pretty good to be human right now, sure”. The Scientist does not grasp my idea because he thinks of Man as being a zoological type, an individual unit consisting of the structure of his bones, the distance between his ears, etc. and thinks, “Yes, the animal called Man is very good”.
In essence, I am transporting an idea from my head to three others’ and it instantly transforms into three entirely different ideas, and then a massive conversation/argument erupts from four different viewpoints of people talking about entirely different things and entirely different topics as a result of the same word: “Man”.
To use another example, let us say a Transcendentalist uses the word “God” in the phrase “God is Great” in a conversation with an Atheist and a Christian. The Atheist links the word God with the image of an imaginary invisible, bearded, paternal sky-ghost who hurls thunderbolts worshiped by ignorant, redneck bible-bumpers. He refutes: “Actually, God is Awful”. The Christian hears the word “God” and links it to Jesus, and responds: “Yes, God IS Great!”. But what the Transcendentalist was referring to was the idea of an omnipresent, omni-benevolent, transcendental consciousness that is within oneself. Because of this the Transcendentalist is happy the Christian agrees with him (despite the fact that he means something different than he does, but is unaware of it) and gets into an argument with the Atheist (who is thinking of a totally different concept than what the Transcendentalist is thinking). As a result of this a totally illusory argument and agreement has taken place simultaneously.
In order for both of these situations to be remedied, for everyone to arrive at the ideal of exact, universal understanding, we would need an exact, universal language. But such a language does not exist, attempts at making such a language (Esperanto) have failed, and since such a language would have to have exact words that would also establish the context I am using them in it would be a very complex, difficult to learn language. Hence this problem will always exist.
It gets especially tragic, even existential, when we consider the fact that, being a consciousness with such-and-such thoughts and sensations temporarily passing through me I greatly rely on other people, who are experiencing reality in just as isolated a fashion, to confirm to me what I am thinking, feeling, sensing, etc, but we cannot understand each other. Hence, doubt envelops everything just as smoke envelops fire.
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