Here’s an update to my post on the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. Lera Boroditsky answered the question, “What have you changed your mind about?” as follows:
I used to think that languages and cultures shape the ways we think. I suspected they shaped the ways we reason and interpret information. But I didn’t think languages could shape the nuts and bolts of perception, the way we actually see the world. That part of cognition seemed too low-level, too hard-wired, too constrained by the constants of physics and physiology to be affected by language.
And here is why she changed her mind:
I set out to show that language didn’t affect perception, but I found exactly the opposite. It turns out that languages meddle in very low-level aspects of perception, and without our knowledge or consent shape the very nuts and bolts of how we see the world.
The details are in the paper Russian blues reveal effects of language on color discrimination. More information can be found on her home page.
Filed under: Philosophy of Mind, Semantics | Tagged: language, perception, Sapir-Whorf
Next “interesting question”, how do specific languages come to their present semantic structure, and what makes this structure mostly stable, if yet subject to some drift (and creativity) in word meanings?
We are quite a bit away from math here; maybe a little philosophy would help: Mathematics, Philosophy, and Artificial Intelligence (1985!!! pheeew…)
Addendum, Gian-Carlo Rota was wrong, bashing “pure” creativity: Creative and noncreative problem solvers exhibit different patterns of brain activity
The underlying theme of David Brin’s fiction is that human beings grew vague languages as opposed to more rigorous languages because it gives them an edge.
A rigorous language would stiffen creativity.
The underlying theme of David Brin’s fiction is that human beings grew vague languages as opposed to more rigorous languages because it gives them an edge.
In Brin’s Startide Rising, humans compare alien languages to human languages, and discover that the alien languages have been subtly designed (by the Progenitors) to channel their speakers’ thoughts along certain lines. This assumes the correctness of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.