How does language change our perception of reality? Does it reflect fundamental limitations of human understanding?
After seeing some interest in philosophical discussion threads in this group last night, here's one for all of you.
Ever since I watched the movie Arrival and saw this quote, I've had this set of questions about humans and how our minds and our perception of reality is influenced by language. I'm going to throw some of those questions out below as a discussion starter and see where we end up. Sorry they're a bit general, feel free to restate any of them to be more specific or more interesting to you.
How does language limit us? Is our inability to really understand and explain concepts such as quantum reality, existence past an event horizon, or a scenario without spacetime (e.g. prior to the big bang) a product of the limitations of language or is it a fundamental limitation of humanity? Can language evolve to be able to capture such concepts? If language does evolve, how will it affect our perception of reality?
The consensus in the field of Linguistics is that the weak version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis holds. It says, basically, that language doesn’t determine how we think, but it does influence it. I think some of the really interesting areas of linguistic relativity that have been studied are different metaphors that are prevalent across different natural languages. If you’re interested in this, I recommend Metaphors We Live By by George Lakoff and Mark Johnsen.
E.g., for languages that you know, ask yourself if these metaphors are prevalent:
TIMEisMONEY: I spent 10 minutes studying.TIMEisSPACE: I moved the meeting.LIFEis aJOURNEY: Sometimes it’s nice to stop and smell the flowers.For
TIMEis*metaphors, esp. there is really fascinating research that has been done.Since you know what fictionalism is, you probably already know this, but Kant argued very similarly to your first paragraph. The main argument of his critique of pure reason is that the world is limited and structured by the limits and structure of our mental capabilities. Then he discusses how we should think about the world on that basis.
Ah thanks for pointing it out. I have to reread Kant, it's been a long time and I was in high school then. It is possible that I said this because I read it 10 years ago and it stuck.
If you read Kant in high school, and understood him, I'd be very impressed. I'm studying philosophy at uni right now, and still found the critique of pure reason a hell of a struggle
Well I read him because it was the standard curriculum in the Spanish high school (but we just touched the basics and I wouldn't say I understood it haha, maybe just subconsciously I got some of those ideas engraved). Would you recommend that I read it?
Tricky question. It partly depends on whether you have a backing in philosophy, since he can be unpleasantly dense - not to mention easy to misunderstand. Most of the problems he was discussing (the foundation of reality, Hume's issues with logic) only seem like problems if you already know about them.
On the other hand, he was extraordinarily broad in his interests, so he ended up writing a lot of stuff that wasn't focussed on the sort of metaphysical issues we're discussing here. He wrote a short essay called 'What is Enlightenment?' that doesn't connect much with what we're talking about, but is an interesting read and a relatively accessible work of his to begin on. So I'd probably read that if I were you, and see what you think. If you like it then maybe it would be worth looking into his other stuff
I think before you think of physical understanding of he universe there's already signs of how language influences your thinking. I had a discussion a bit ago on how the subjunctive is pretty much dead in Dutch (and not often used in English, or if appropriate it's often skipped, e.g. "it'd be good if he were here" often is said as "it'd be good if he was here") but quite some in French and that it does end up influencing not just your language but also how you think of requests and of things around you.
That's really interesting. Brings to mind my days as a Latin student in high school, as the Romans had a bunch of linguistic conventions and forms, including the subjunctive, that have almost no equivalent in modern English. I was always especially fascinated by the gerundive and the Romans' conception of height/depth.
Borrowing from Wikipedia's page on the Latin gerundive, the phrase 'homo laudandus est' translated directly to English is "the man is to be praised". At least in my experience of American English, this construct really doesn't exist any more and is replaced by "should" or "must", which both convey a slightly different meaning than the translation from Latin and seem like they would affect how the speaker/listener think of the action performed.
The second thing I mentioned, about height vs depth, is also quite interesting, I think. The Romans often didn't differentiate between the two, instead, using the word "altus" for both. Essentially, they thought of all things as being measured from bottom to top, rather than having essentially a "negative height" like English speakers think of depth. So a deep river and a tall mountain were both "altus" to Romans, since they were both of great height from the bottom to the top.