Linguistic Determinism

[illusivemind]

I think proponents of linguistic determinism akin to the Saphir-Worf hypothesis have relied on bad science and missed out an integral part of the picture for the conclusion that reality is somehow created 'through' language.

To any reasonable person, the idea that reality is construct by language alone is insane. For this is to completely dismiss the physical world, and that given the right circumstances we could be like god in saying 'let there be light' and there was light.


Yes let us suppose there is a real physical world. Further to that, the cognitive access to that (noumenal) world is restricted to our sensory perception of it (phenomenal). Now try to imagine a purely phenomenal interpretation of reality.

In order to do this, you would need to rid yourself of all concepts and conceptual frameworks as constructed by language. So you may perceive colour in the way that a bird does, but have no clue as to 'what colour is.'

I contend such an experience can barely be called a 'reality', and that language is key in elevating our conception and perception of these phenomena into an understandable experience.

[simian20]

you speak english? you are ok! the singularity will not harm you. pass this door

[simian20]

illusive mind. what software would you recommend to make music then? im interested in knowing. any cheap software? nice tune by the by. reminds me of pulsewidth, aphex twin; slightly more commercial though

[Dunearhp]

I think proponents of linguistic determinism akin to the Saphir-Worf hypothesis have relied on bad science and missed out an integral part of the picture for the conclusion that reality is somehow created 'through' language.

To any reasonable person, the idea that reality is construct by language alone is insane. For this is to completely dismiss the physical world, and that given the right circumstances we could be like god in saying 'let there be light' and there was light.
I think you are applying the inverse of the hypothesis. It makes no claims on the construction of reality, only on the construction of our thoughts.

I do disagree with the strong form of the Saphir-Whorf hypothesis. Natural language by itself is not a complete knowledge representation system, especially when applied to the nature of conciousness.


Yes let us suppose there is a real physical world. Further to that, the cognitive access to that (noumenal) world is restricted to our sensory perception of it (phenomenal). Now try to imagine a purely phenomenal interpretation of reality.

In order to do this, you would need to rid yourself of all concepts and conceptual frameworks as constructed by language. So you may perceive colour in the way that a bird does, but have no clue as to 'what colour is.'
In this situation, all you are left with is qualia. A question I would ask is how this situation would affect the nature of our stored memories.
I think it may actually be easier to remember snapshots of experience in such a situation. The memory likes to index by sensation. Smell is an example of a very strong trigger for memory.
A question that follows is: Without language, would we be reduced to operating at the level of a lookup table. i.e. we encounter a sensation, compare it to our past and then perform the action that last resulted in a positive outcome.


I contend such an experience can barely be called a 'reality', and that language is key in elevating our conception and perception of these phenomena into an understandable experience.
Reality is a loaded word, it has too much qualia behind it. Language just helps us catalog and add structure to our experiences. I think it influences our ability to make ouselves understood, more than it influences our ability to understand the world.

[Lee]

In order to do this, you would need to rid yourself of all concepts and conceptual frameworks as constructed by language. So you may perceive colour in the way that a bird does, but have no clue as to 'what colour is.'

I contend such an experience can barely be called a 'reality', and that language is key in elevating our conception and perception of these phenomena into an understandable experience.Language may be necassary to communicate our conceptual models, but it is not necassary to have them.

I know that I spend a considerable amount of effort trying to translate my thoughts into words, which means that I understand before translating that understanding into language. I do not place such importance upon language.

[joft]

I'm not sure I get the Sapir-Whorf thesis.

I mean, if it is what it appears to be, it's incredibly ridiculous; yet it merited a nobel prize? I think I must be missing something.

[cjs55]

I know that I spend a considerable amount of effort trying to translate my thoughts into words, which means that I understand before translating that understanding into language. I do not place such importance upon language.

An issue...once a concept is translated from the 'natural process of thought' into language, does it lose it's earlier meaning and find itself trapped in the meaning of words? Do we trap everything we initially see and think and feel and eliminate the 'essence' once we 'find words' for it, replacing it with the symbology of word/concept which is a social/ideological construct?

[joft]

I wouldn't say so; many times I think of a word for what I'm trying to say but it isn't the exact word I was trying to remember, so I keep thinking.

http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/stanford/entries/language-thought/

[rufio]

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis does not state that reality is created by language, and in fact I wouldn't call it deterministic at all. It's really rather mild. All it says is basically what you said - that our conception and interpretation of reality is shaped by the words we are taught to use to describe it. For example, most of us are taught about disease being caused by germs. This in itself is all good science that has been pretty well proven, and I'm not trying to argue otherwise, but look at the language we use:
fight cancer/aids/etc
kill germs
combat disease
<picture of red blood cells in military uniforms>
etc....
This is something that's not part of our daily experience (we can't see or hear or feel the way out bodies work at that level, or at least only very generally), so we come up with a way to conceptualize what's going on that we can relate to. This is taught to us via the language, since that's all we have available. Different cultures conceptualize disease in different ways, which leads to radically different interpretations of where it comes from and how to treat it, which in turn leads to widespread misconceptions about disease and Western stereotypes of the 3rd world as being unable to keep itself healthy.

Here's another example:
waste [of] time
spend time
lose time
buy time
make time
no time/out of time
thank you for your time

Time is money? Apparently.

Or:
score
first/second/third base
pitcher
catcher
foreplay

And sex is a game...

I'm sure you can think of more.

[illusivemind]

I think you are applying the inverse of the hypothesis. It makes no claims on the construction of reality, only on the construction of our thoughts.
Not if the knowable reality is one constructed by our thoughts.



I do disagree with the strong form of the Saphir-Whorf hypothesis. Natural language by itself is not a complete knowledge representation system, especially when applied to the nature of conciousness.

Agreed. We can’t see the seventeenth type of snow if we don’t have a word for it? Crap. Even putting aside the fact that the 50 Eskimo words for snow is a myth, what if had a sentence that described that seventeenth type of snow?

These philosophers love to use the colour spectrum and different cultures who apply words to different chunks of the spectrum to support this thesis. The example I came up with is colour blindness. Whether you have a word for red or not, you are not going to see it if you are colour blind. Hence, language is not the only thing that affects our perception of the world, of qualia.



Without language, would we be reduced to operating at the level of a lookup table. i.e. we encounter a sensation, compare it to our past and then perform the action that last resulted in a positive outcome.


Yes, I think this is a description approaching the experience of non-linguistic animals. A sensory input database that we called ‘instinct’. Some of it hard-wired, some of it learned through childhood.



Reality is a loaded word, it has too much qualia behind it. Language just helps us catalog and add structure to our experiences. I think it influences our ability to make ourselves understood, more than it influences our ability to understand the world.

I agree, reality is a loaded word. What I’m really talking about is the noetic experience as structured upon the aesthetic experience. Language is thought of as a communicative tool not ‘reality creation device’, but the use of language in communication is to demarcate and add meaning to a primitive sense-experience. Without language, nothing can have meaning, what consequences might this have for what we would call ‘thought’?

[illusivemind]

Language may be necassary to communicate our conceptual models, but it is not necassary to have them.

What is a non-linguistic concept like? What does it contain, what does it mean? Of course it is fallacious to conclude because they are ineffable they do not exist, but when I’m thinking, I’m thinking in words, layered upon sensory stimuli or not.


I know that I spend a considerable amount of effort trying to translate my thoughts into words, which means that I understand before translating that understanding into language. I do not place such importance upon language.

Are you translating wordless thoughts or creating thoughts with words? People often claim that because they have trouble finding the word that suits their thought, this experience refutes my thesis. Not so, poverty of laconic language proves nothing.

EG. I’m trying to find the word that describes this certain type of experience. One where a thing transforms into something else, as if by magic. Well I already described the thought in words, all I’m doing is trying to remember a succinct version of thought in a word I’ve already encountered or think there may be a word for. In this case it happens to be transmogrification.

Natural language does not form a one to one basis for aesthetic reality. No matter how verbose our vocabulary we do not posses enough words to accurately convey to someone the exact sensory experience we may be experiencing at any one time, this may help explain the feeling of language being poor vessels for our thoughts. But I submit they are poor vessels for our feelings, our qualia.

And they are poor at succinctly expressing complex thoughts, language develops communicatively. There is no drive to make economical the linguistic constructions we use only by ourselves. These are thoughts have amassed these thoughts from bits and pieces everywhere overtime and have not thought to set it out in a consistent and grammatical manner.

[rufio]

Not if the knowable reality is one constructed by our thoughts.

Indeed. I think being a complete relativist would put you out of your league in science, which is the study of a presumably objective reality. Unless you're talking about quantum physics, that is.


These philosophers love to use the colour spectrum and different cultures who apply words to different chunks of the spectrum to support this thesis. The example I came up with is colour blindness. Whether you have a word for red or not, you are not going to see it if you are colour blind. Hence, language is not the only thing that affects our perception of the world, of qualia.

You will still see that frequency of light - you just won't register it as effectively different from green. There are not six, or eight, or ten, or however many 'colors' you think there are - there are an infinite number of individual shades, and the fact that normal, non-colorblind people can distinguish all of them does not mean we conceive of each having a different meaning.


non-linguistic animals

There's no such thing. Nearly every living thing (that's not an amoeba, or an earthworm, or something like that) communicates in some way. Sure, Academia(tm) will not consider that "linguistic", but there's no clear distinction between what is "language" and what isn't, so it's a pointless label.

[illusivemind]

An issue...once a concept is translated from the 'natural process of thought' into language, does it lose it's earlier meaning and find itself trapped in the meaning of words? Do we trap everything we initially see and think and feel and eliminate the 'essence' once we 'find words' for it, replacing it with the symbology of word/concept which is a social/ideological construct?

Maybe there is a metaphysical essence of reality beyond language that is not qualia. However, how essential is this to the experience and comprehension of reality? If it is an adjunct, then the role of language in constructing the noetic reality, still stands.

[illusivemind]

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis does not state that reality is created by language, and in fact I wouldn't call it deterministic at all. It's really rather mild. All it says is basically what you said - that our conception and interpretation of reality is shaped by the words we are taught to use to describe it.

The strong form of the hypothesis states that you cannot think a thought that is not expressible in your natural language. So you cannot think of the seventeenth form of Eskimo snow, whilst an Eskimo can. (This has been debunked)

[rufio]

I'm not sure how you 'debunk' something that has no testable scientific verification, but that's irrelevant. As far as I know, no one supports the strong form of the hypothesis seriously.

[kuranes]

Somebody told me once that some blind people can tell different colors apart by how they FEEL! ( All things being equal, the surface of the objects so colored. ) I wonder if that's true?

[illusivemind]

I'm not sure how you 'debunk' something that has no testable scientific verification, but that's irrelevant. As far as I know, no one supports the strong form of the hypothesis seriously.

The notion that Inuits have '50' words for snow has been debunked. It is a myth.

[rufio]

Yes, but how would that prove anything, even if it were true? English isn't really lacking in words for snow either, come to think of it. And as far as I know, that idea has nothing to do with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. I forget who wrote the original (true) statement, but the extrapolation into 50 words (as opposed to, like 7, originally) was entirely due to the same kind of idiots that forward those email chain letters.

[joft]

Whorf wrote about the Inuits and he did give a number that was rather high, and nobody knows where the hell he got that number because he didn't even know their language himself

[kuranes]

Because they use the snow for building material and because they have to watch out for avalanches and edges of chasms etc. I can imagine that they do have a lot of words for different kinds of snow. 50? I don't remember what the number I heard was. 50 sounds a bit high. Be interesting to hear the details of this "debunking", as though it was all just an "urban legend", like the one about the guy's head left bobbing on the car antennae, or something.

[Lee]

What is a non-linguistic concept like? What does it contain, what does it mean? Of course it is fallacious to conclude because they are ineffable they do not exist, but when I’m thinking, I’m thinking in words, layered upon sensory stimuli or not.You may think soley in words... I really, honestly do not. Like when I draw a picture, I am not thinking in words, yet I know what I am doing, I understand the process and execute it. Words are symbols we use that we apply meaning to.

Meaning and language are seperate, otherwise.. where did the first word come from?


Are you translating wordless thoughts or creating thoughts with words? People often claim that because they have trouble finding the word that suits their thought, this experience refutes my thesis. Not so, poverty of laconic language proves nothing.

EG. I’m trying to find the word that describes this certain type of experience. One where a thing transforms into something else, as if by magic. Well I already described the thought in words, all I’m doing is trying to remember a succinct version of thought in a word I’ve already encountered or think there may be a word for. In this case it happens to be transmogrification.

Natural language does not form a one to one basis for aesthetic reality. No matter how verbose our vocabulary we do not posses enough words to accurately convey to someone the exact sensory experience we may be experiencing at any one time, this may help explain the feeling of language being poor vessels for our thoughts. But I submit they are poor vessels for our feelings, our qualia.

And they are poor at succinctly expressing complex thoughts, language develops communicatively. There is no drive to make economical the linguistic constructions we use only by ourselves. These are thoughts have amassed these thoughts from bits and pieces everywhere overtime and have not thought to set it out in a consistent and grammatical manner.To be honest, I do not quite think I am clear enough on what you are trying to express to respond properly.

[rufio]

'50' came from overextrapolation. The original (written by Whorf, I suppose) was something in the range of 7 or 12ish. Nowhere near 50.

Let's think about English for a minute:

snow
sleet
slush
flurry
powder
hard pack

And where I live, it snows maybe once every 4-5 years. I'm sure people who live in snowy places can think of even more off the top of their heads.

[Ivy]

You may think soley in words... I really, honestly do not. Like when I draw a picture, I am not thinking in words, yet I know what I am doing, I understand the process and execute it. Words are symbols we use that we apply meaning to.


You may not always think in words, but our brains are forever changed by having learned language. I'm not sure it's possible to do much of anything in the utter absence of language, in our culturized state. It's sort of like darkness-- your room at night seems dark, but if you've ever experienced total darkness in an underground cave, your room at night is bright by comparison. Likewise, even when we're not consciously using language, our brains are still soaked in it.

[Ivy]

'50' came from overextrapolation. The original (written by Whorf, I suppose) was something in the range of 7 or 12ish. Nowhere near 50.

Let's think about English for a minute:

snow
sleet
slush
flurry
powder
hard pack

And where I live, it snows maybe once every 4-5 years. I'm sure people who live in snowy places can think of even more off the top of their heads.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eskimo_words_for_snow


The first citation dealing with multiple Eskimo words for snow is found in the introduction to "The Handbook of North American Indians", the 1911 work of linguist and anthropologist Franz Boas. Boas mentions that Eskimos have four separate words for snow: aput ("snow on the ground"), gana ("falling snow"), piqsirpoq ("drifting snow"), and qimuqsuq ("snowdrift"), where we have only one. It is inaccurate to say that speakers of the English language have only word for snow, but Boas's intentions were good: in citing the Eskimo language, he was remarking on how differences in culture are often directly correlated to differences in language.

Benjamin Whorf, however, believed that the language we speak both affects and reflects our view of the world. In an attempt to better support his theory of linguistic relativism, he latched onto Eskimo languages' distinctions among words for snow. A work of Whorf in a highly popular 1940 MIT technical journal arbitrarily inflated the list to seven different words -- and the myth snowballed from there. By 1978, the number quoted had reached 50. On February 9, 1984 the New York Times gave the number as one hundred in an editorial.

The idea that Eskimos had hundreds of words for snow--indeed, hundreds of unique and fairly unrelated words--gave credence to Whorf's theory of linguistic relativism by suggesting that Eskimos viewed snow very differently than people of other cultures. For example, when it snows, we see snow, but they could see any manifestation of their great and varied vocabulary. Whorf believed that not only could Eskimo speakers choose one of several words, they were totally unable to understand our categorizing all seven (or however many) as "snow". To them, each word was an entirely different concept. Their language was responsible for their view of the world. If that were the truth for Eskimo languages, Whorf theorized, it must also be the same for others.

[Maniac]

You may not always think in words, but our brains are forever changed by having learned language. I'm not sure it's possible to do much of anything in the utter absence of language, in our culturized state. It's sort of like darkness-- your room at night seems dark, but if you've ever experienced total darkness in an underground cave, your room at night is bright by comparison. Likewise, even when we're not consciously using language, our brains are still soaked in it.

I agree. Once a language is learned, almost all thought is "filtered" through that language. The thought process itself is a very interesting phenomenon. One of many versions of it probably goes something like this:

You get a flash of an idea, where you "know" something but cannot grasp it yet.
Through analysis and logic, and deductive methods, you come to an understanding of this idea.
And it proceeds so and so forth, eventually involving the emotions and the physical labor involved to bring an idea into reality.

The thing is, speech is very interesting. It's not necessarily needed for anything I spoke about above, yet it's needed for it all. All of your body, all of your organs, are created for your own good, for your own self regulation. Except for your mouth. Your mouth is the only organ in your mouth that is made to communicate with others, to influence others, etc. In this way, speech becomes the ultimate unifying link between people. Without language, without speech, we are all just self-interested thinking little beings running around doing our own things. The tongue allows us to unite, to become more than the sum of our parts.

The thing which baffles me is, where did language come from? I have a hard time accepting that people created languages. With all of our deep understandings now, with grammar forms and the studies of Chomsky, we have more or less failed in creating our own language now(and we've tried, look up esperanto, also related to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis).

If you say that many different cultures and people made up languages, then you have to ask: how is that there is a pattern, a grammatical structure, common to all langauges ? And that this pattern was discovered by all the nations of the world? And this it was discovered relatively simultaneously? Not easy questions to answer...

[kuranes]

I agree. Once a language is learned, almost all thought is "filtered" through that language. The thought process itself is a very interesting phenomenon. One of many versions of it probably goes something like this:

You get a flash of an idea, where you "know" something but cannot grasp it yet.
Through analysis and logic, and deductive methods, you come to an understanding of this idea.
And it proceeds so and so forth, eventually involving the emotions and the physical labor involved to bring an idea into reality.

The thing is, speech is very interesting. It's not necessarily needed for anything I spoke about above, yet it's needed for it all. All of your body, all of your organs, are created for your own good, for your own self regulation. Except for your mouth. Your mouth is the only organ in your mouth that is made to communicate with others, to influence others, etc. In this way, speech becomes the ultimate unifying link between people. Without language, without speech, we are all just self-interested thinking little beings running around doing our own things. The tongue allows us to unite, to become more than the sum of our parts.

The thing which baffles me is, where did language come from? I have a hard time accepting that people created languages. With all of our deep understandings now, with grammar forms and the studies of Chomsky, we have more or less failed in creating our own language now(and we've tried, look up esperanto, also related to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis).

If you say that many different cultures and people made up languages, then you have to ask: how is that there is a pattern, a grammatical structure, common to all langauges ? And that this pattern was discovered by all the nations of the world? And this it was discovered relatively simultaneously? Not easy questions to answer...



Your own thread on facial recognition has a very interesting post in it, which did not get nearly the attention that I thought it would, ( from Jkrs. ) and that, in turn, has some interesting links to sites with examples ( among other things ) of how the mind filters things. You might be surprised by how much the brain stitches things together to allow your world to be more navigable/comfortable etc.

Language is a part of these filters.

Did language come about in approximately equivalent ways in disparate cultures spread around the world? An interesting question indeed. This fits into questions about morphic resonance and "paradigms" etc. also. Strangely and "coincidentally" enough, I was just conversing with someone on a similar subject.

Do great minds think alike? jk/