I really enjoyed this talk. It's not my field whatsoever as I am a physicist, but they're useful concepts to ponder as they relate quite fundamentally to natural philosophic ideas.
the last three words of your comment are espousing a distinct understanding of the separation of humanity and the natural world. I've not heard it expressed the way you just did, thank you.
I have to side with the dude who asked the questions. It is true that research has shown that language influences perception, for e.g. there has been some evidence that participants that were familiar like the term for cyan, were more likely to differentiate between blue and cyan than someone who thinks of cyan as a light blue. But it is important to note that this does not prove a causal link but a correlation. It is very likely that language itself is a reflection of societal and cultural norms, so if there is a social (or evolutionary) pressure for something, it shapes how we develop our language. An example of this is the kinship systems, in English the concept of a "close" family, extends to parents and siblings. But other languages expand this, and we see that in those languages because they have different terms to differentiate a maternal grandmother from a paternal counterpart. And some cultures would have different terms for an uncle from your dad's side and an uncle from your mom's side. And a culture that places importance on age (respecting elders) would have differentiating terms for sibling/kins that are older/younger. I agree that it is important to be aware of this and more vigilant in forming there socio-linguistic structures, but you cannot claim but language is making you think this way, when thinking way could have been why we have language in such a way.
The eye can’t see what the lip won’t speak Spit your truth, inner gaze perceive The space amidst the spiral where the branch meets leaf Beyond the surface content be the space between
The continuum fallacy is a logical fallacy that occurs when someone argues that two states or conditions are not distinct because there is a continuum between them.
Great presentation. It seems to me that the person asking questions is making a point that doesn't contradict what the speaker is saying. The distinctions they're citing do actually exist in reality - as they suggest - but that's because any arbitrary distinction *exists* depending on the criteria you choose. It seems like the "five different types of snow" is a distinction that does accurately reflect a physical reality with physical consequences. The mistake is assuming that there is any finite, smallest, or "correct" way to divide physical reality into linguistic descriptions. But that doesn't mean that our words don't reflect some real physical distinction, however arbitrary. For example, most molecules of snow will have different amounts of dissolved chemicals and ions which makes it physically different, but this physical difference is not something that's functionally important, or even perceivable to us on a human scale most of the time.
@@Will-wb6xl no you go on to contradict yourself. Your last sentence attempts to provide a reasoning for why some differences are important. If there is a reason the grouping/categorization is no longer arbitrary. Which is what the dude asking the questions was trying to explain. You can't just say we divide things as we please, because there's often a very good reason why we did the things we did. Also the dude asking questions never said there was a "correct" way to do things. He just pointed out that the differences in the vocabulary exist not for some arbitrary reason and that simply grouping something together doesn't make the differences disappear because (1) the difference is intrinsic to the object, (2) just because the difference is inconsequential doesn't mean the difference is no longer there.
@@kbee225 I think I see the confusion. There’s no contradiction. I was not attempting to say anything was "important", that’s an overly anthropocentric reading of my comment (also the view of the questioner in the video). Things that are "important" to humans are absolutely arbitrary in terms of physics - and it’s this relationship between pure physical reality and language that’s the point of discussion, not between language and utility which is what you're implying. The reasons humans have for making distinctions between physical objects are based in physical reality but not intrinsic to it. The point is that physical reality is on a spectrum and language has to make arbitrary distinctions. How many hairs do you have to gain in order not to be considered “bald” anymore? When does a “pile” become a “hill”? Are your fingernails “you” or “part of you”? What about after you cut them? The last sentence of my last comment was meant to show that when you say the word “snow” or more specifically “H2O”, the actual physical object you’re referring to almost never perfectly reflects the idealized concept of it in your mind.
The other guy arguing w you is right becouse you use the words as a concept of categorizatoin but giving it a name is not the only way to categorize it. Different peoples, different brains and different types of percepting things... I can tell that w my perception of categorizing things its not even doing anything with words or letters etc. I categorizing things with their concepts. İts hard to explain and i know i explained it very bad but its kinda different. However what you say is true either bc language is a tool to link everyones perception in one. And olso perception itself is a spectrum. That guy at the background said sound and sight .For example vibration is sound aproximately around 20 to 20k hz but at 562×10¹² hz its colour blue.
The last example is a false equivalency. Not all frequencies are the same. In light the frequency is measured through fluctuations in the electromagnetic field. In the case of sound it is measured as a fluctuation of pressure. Those two things are VERY different. A better example would be comparing just different wavelengths of light. While 550nm is green and visible. 1000nm(infrared) is invisible and can be perceived as warmth.
But the idea that perception is a spectrum also aids the main speakers point. Language absolutely has an effect on perception, but it obviously isn't the only thing we use to perceive things. If it were the case that language exclusively dictated our perception, then we wouldn't be able to notice distinctions without them. That's an obvious point that the kid should have noted and didn't, but that also doesn't make him any less correct. Most languages have feminine and masculine versions of words, that is a fundamental difference which would impact how a person would contextualize a statement. This is also why translation is so difficult. Translators are practically authors of their own, as they have to understand material so intuitively so that they may recontextualize it in another language and maintain the original message to the best of their ability whilst also making the text sound natural.
Two interesting things to consider are ofcs the ability to categorize things without language - animals do this with different plants for survival, but also the fact that distinction exists in physics regardless of gradients existing. There a hard and fast distinction between electromagnetism and gravity for example which is inherent in the world, so are different quantum states for electrons.
He was talking about the colors all the time. Yes, color is spectral, but not all things. Take fruits, there're various types of apple, so as banana, they are somehow continuous within their own breed. But you cannot find a breed between apple and banana, say, a 70% apple + 30% banana, or any given point at the continuity between banana and apple. Or our body, we have a nose and two eyes, but there is nothing on our face to be a 60% nose and 40% eye, they are not continuous. That is why different languages identify them MOSTLY in the same way. I know the philosophy he was talking about, but I don't think it's as absolute as they claim, that everything or every concept is contributed by people.
Good point. I also wouldn’t say that everything is a spectrum. This is just what the philosophy talks about. However, even if not everything is a spectrum, a lot of things are, including all physical objects. When we talk about spectrum we don’t mean that things blend into each other. They don’t, but instead imagine a million fruits, each slightly genetically different. No two fruits will be the same, and at some point, we will stop identifying the fruit as an apple but rather as something else. If we keep going then the fruit will become eventually become a banana. The point is, between any two things, there is an infinite list of things that are slightly different which eventually connects the two things. That is what they mean by gradient. I hope this clears up the video :) I don’t doubt that my explanation isn’t perfect. It probably isn’t lol. I’m glad you took the time to review it 👍
@@ACGethicsclub Yes, I know what you mean. But my point is, even if we keep going along the apple variants, there is still a huge gap between apples and bananas, there is actually no such a fruit that equally close to both sides, so that could be arbitarily categorized. But what I agree is that different languages do have different ways of grouping things. Maybe in some language there is a word for apple and banana as a whole, but leave other fruits excluded, while we just distinguish them. In that case, the difference between languages at naming colors could be also considered a kind of difference at grouping. Hope I'm clear this time XD
Another example, do you think chemical elements were actually continuous, but people created the boundaries between them? I don't think so. The difference between elements should be absolute, according to the number of their protons. That number is discrete and could not be continuous in anyway, right?
@@hasutailiu5392 Yes definitely. Great point. Again, i personally don’t think everything is a continuum. However with that said, the macro world is pretty different. No two objects are made of the same arrangement of chemicals. You definitely have a point in that chemicals can be precisely defined. But consider that most apples do not have the same chemical makeup. Yet we call them all apples to certain extent, until it becomes so chemically different that it becomes another fruit. We can draw that line anywhere, really. The point is not that everything is a continuum, only some things are. And in the things that can be proven to be a continuum, this theory of language applies. This is what I believe Derrida would argue. I could always be wrong.
First of all, great talk! It would be interesting to expand the discussion to things like emotion rationalization, the usage of emojis, memes, and other "mute" symbols. But anyways, just commenting to put my two cents in: I think the other person had an interesting contribution, but the speaker (which I'm gonna refer to "you") wasn't open and flexible enough to reflect with them. See, you introduced the idea that `all language artifacts shape our perception of reality in some way`. Yeah, we're with you, we got this part, great, but this doesn't imply that `our perception of reality is entirely shaped by language`. Our central unit of language processing is located in the left hemisphere of our brain, while the right hemisphere is linked with things like emotions recognition and spatial intelligence. What do you think happens in epilepsy patients that undergoe corpus callosotomy (a surgery that cuts the estructure responsible to make left-right brain communication)? Well, I highly suggest looking up for experiments with these patients, it will certainly open up your mind to different ways of experimenting and making sense of reality. Think about motor skills, for example. You don't need to name all the little different variations of table tennis racket handling to know how to react to certain in-game situations, because you have _muscle memory_ in your favor. The athlete for sure makes distictions between all of them, but they're not necessarily "rationalized" and thought through with the agglutination of phonemes. Hence the idea that our reality is also influenced by other things apart from language, even though all language influence our reality.
Hi, thanks for the suggestions! The psychology experiments were very interesting. But of course, our reality is not solely influenced by language. Language, as far as this philosophy is concerned, only affects how we percieve differences between things and how we categorize them.
To use the example of the dude in the audience, that touching yellow snow kills you or whatever.. So he's trying to get at the idea that there are distinctions that exist already that people then come up with words for. BUT that example actually requires, as the presenter is trying to illustrate, for somethings to be considered yellow and some things not to be. And those things, those distinctions that we find culturally important enough to make, then get reflected in our language. And therefore can also reflect which distinctions are not culturally relevant enough to make.
Hi, I’m actually the person who asked the questions. I disagree with the premise in its entirety. If I were to find for example an example that requires zero words whatsoever to define differences I could easily bring up the fact gorillas can tell apart bananas from apples. This does however not mean that I disagree with the reflection of cultural distinctions in language. In the moment however, the speakers case implied that without language, distinctions would just cease to exist. To clarify the premise I find specifically troubling is simply the deterministic value of language. ‘The great Eskimo vocabulary hoax, and other irreverent essays on the study of language’ by Geoffrey K. Pullum is a great book that criticises many linguistic theories (I believe chapter 7 was the most relevant but I can’t remember)
@@Neeedscheeeese I think you miss the intention of the philosophical argument. He was using examples to illustrate how human use language ( actually symbol or sign might be a better word) to organise themselves in human society. It does not concern itself with the true nature of existing material things. It is not so much that without language, distinctions would just cease to exist but rather true distintiction can only arise when it is functionally useful to give it a name for your community. For scientific comunity it might be a new theory or concept. For a chef it might be a new dish that is being added to the menu. Most impotantly this theory is trying to say the idea of what count as distinctive is ultimately arbitrary. Hence why we need to becareful of the deterministic value of language. The speaker used a good example of pink and girl. Where does this association comes from? We think there is inherent quality to those relation just like how some cultures think there is inherent quality to 2 different colours, but there is no true law of physics that said pink belongs to girl or what this is red that is pink.
@@Neeedscheeeese Exactly! Smells for instance. (English is notoriously weak in vocabulary for smells). You can say there is a difference between the smell of an orange and an apple and without being able to articulate what the difference is. The differences are intrinsic, we are biased by societal and cultural norms (or also as you said, evolutionary pressure) to "focus" on certain differences and to overlook some others. Arguing that the differences are imparted by the words is a logical fallacy.
@@smc9207 no that's factually incorrect. You can't say the differences only materialize when we create a vocabulary for them. You may be able to discern the difference in flavor between individuals of the same group. For eg, you can tell not all apples taste the same, even those of the same variety and within the same range of ripeness. And I also reject your premise that philosophy is not concerned with logic or science. That's just not true. Logic itself is a product of philosophy.
@@Zero-fh2wb what do you mean? It can be argued that abstract isolation is how a concept exists. If nothing is isolated, then there is no difference between your thoughts and mine. And ergo, we would not really have discernable identities.
@@kbee225 we have different ideas of isolation, you can only distinguish your idea, in relation to there being different ideas existing. there is a necessary other in order to distinguish something. just because something is distinguished doesnt mean it is isolated. and just because it isnt isolated, doesnt mean they're one and the same. light and dark dont exist in isolation, we understand what is dark through a lack of light, and we understand what is light through a lack of whats dark. they dont exist in isolation, they exist in relation, and it is through existing in relation, that they are able to be distinguished. If they truly existed in isolation, as in, nothing else existed but it, then everything would be dark, or everything would be bright, and nothing would distinguish it. thats what i mean when i say nothing exists in isolation. sure you can isolate its existence, but you can only isolate its existence if it exists in relation to other things to isolate it from.
5:47 I don’t get your thinking. Naming slightly different pasta skibidi pasta doesn’t make it not pasta. It’s just what you said it was: slightly different PASTA.
@@suburbanburrito210 yeah except what he said isn't how it works in reality. Language is a social construct and thus changes can only be made by a "group" and not by an individual. He can choose to call it whatever he wants, but for it to penetrate the language it needs to be accepted by society. And that acceptance is often based on pragmatic reasons. For eg., if a social group has to refer to that specific pasta frequently in day to day life, it becomes easier to give it a discerning name. Else, there's no reason why I shouldn't use the collective term to simply say "I had spaghetti for dinner". Ergo, what he's saying is if he gives it a different name, people will start seeing it as a different pasta. But in reality, it's the other way around, it gets a different name ONLY if there's a consequential difference. For eg, angel hair pasta is a thinner type of spaghetti, but it's differentiated because you have to adjust the cook time between regular spaghetti and angel hair pasta.
I am more interested in the opposite. Do language restrict one way of thinking? Say English have a specific grammar to indicate past, present and future. But some language don't have that. Does that mean they always live in the present so they can't do long term planning? The answer after years of research are no. Thinking is seperate from language. Cognitive function are much more hardwire than language can express. That's why the mute, deaf or blind don't perceive the differently than the rest of us.
Words do shape reality because people rely off of assumptions. Because you are a man, these traits follow. Prescriptivism of genders dictates what each gender is to do based off of its essence as a gendered object. Descriptivism defines what a words means by what it is or does. If a woman decides to be an engineer instead of a housewife, they are descriptively defining the traits of a woman rather than following the prescribed traits. Existence precedes essence, descriptivism is the way of the future and prescriptivism does nothing but fence us in. People with small minds need predictability and will enforce the status quo onto others (but only if it fits their agenda).
In analytic philosophy this topic is called the problem of natural kinds. We suppose things can be different in kind (apple vs banana) and they can be different in degree (banana with some spots vs banana with a lot of spots), but is there a sense in which things are _naturally_ different in kind? A more serious example are fundamental particles, it seems like if we are to be committed to scientific realism then we must accept particles are natural kinds. There is no “half electron” they are always distinct from another particle, and there is no variation between individual electrons.
The term "word" should be replaced with "symbol" in the argument with the student asking great questions. Words of course are symbols. But symbols are not always words. They are signifiers of concepts. Symbols can be non-verbal. You would not have to learn the language in order to be able to conceive of the idea that yellow snow kills you. But the mind will generate a port, let's say, for a word. That port is the symbol for yellow snow and how it kills you. So we need symbols for "death", "health," "punch," "yellow," "snow," to be "online" before we can create a grouping of these more irreducible symbols which enables the chunking together of a symbol that shortcut-signifies, "yellow snow kills you." Or, as I would like to suggest (and what makes a great post-punk band name), it allows you to define Danger Snow. The student was actually on to something very important. Difference is not perception-dependent. Perception of Difference is perception-dependent. This is not mind-blowing. It is a trivial truth. Yellow snow contains Differences from white snow, irregardless of an observer. What is trying to be put forth is the important concept that: an observer's capacity for identifying Difference can never break from the web of interrelation that constitutes their internal language. Both things are true, the teacher's general bent, and the student's. The meta-dynamic that is on display here, however, is that the teacher role is interruptive and impulsive to the student role which is prodding and curious. Ironically, this dynamic of master-slave, or authority and nascency is what shaves away at our capacity for generating our own symbologies.
Sorry, but the experimental evidence in support of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is extremely thin. The fact that this example of color discrimination is still the go-to example after a century of investigation and the actual experimental effect was shown to be weak is very telling. Even if the results were strong, you would only have this one function, discriminating shades of blue, which is such a trivial task and could probably be learned in a matter of minutes by a nonverbal person or even a rodent. I’m not trying to insult these philosophers but I hope the new generation will approach this idea of language affecting perception with much greater skepticism. Language is one way the brain labels the sensory world, but it is far from the whole story.
“For God so loved the world that he gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” - John 3:16 Jesus loves you and died for you on the cross. He did this to wash away the burden of sins, and if you open your heart to Him, He can take away the burden and give you a peace incomparable to anything in this world. God bless everyone here. ✝✝🙏
The eye can’t see what the lip won’t speak Spit your truth, inner gaze perceive The space amidst the spiral where the branch meets leaf Beyond the surface content be the space between
I really enjoyed this talk. It's not my field whatsoever as I am a physicist, but they're useful concepts to ponder as they relate quite fundamentally to natural philosophic ideas.
lol
the last three words of your comment are espousing a distinct understanding of the separation of humanity and the natural world. I've not heard it expressed the way you just did, thank you.
youtube recommendation algorithm, please suggest more like this.
Bro wtf im learning a lot from this than anything in school, you guys explain it so well
I have to side with the dude who asked the questions. It is true that research has shown that language influences perception, for e.g. there has been some evidence that participants that were familiar like the term for cyan, were more likely to differentiate between blue and cyan than someone who thinks of cyan as a light blue.
But it is important to note that this does not prove a causal link but a correlation. It is very likely that language itself is a reflection of societal and cultural norms, so if there is a social (or evolutionary) pressure for something, it shapes how we develop our language. An example of this is the kinship systems, in English the concept of a "close" family, extends to parents and siblings. But other languages expand this, and we see that in those languages because they have different terms to differentiate a maternal grandmother from a paternal counterpart. And some cultures would have different terms for an uncle from your dad's side and an uncle from your mom's side. And a culture that places importance on age (respecting elders) would have differentiating terms for sibling/kins that are older/younger.
I agree that it is important to be aware of this and more vigilant in forming there socio-linguistic structures, but you cannot claim but language is making you think this way, when thinking way could have been why we have language in such a way.
The eye can’t see what the lip won’t speak
Spit your truth, inner gaze perceive
The space amidst the spiral where the branch meets leaf
Beyond the surface content be the space between
Very impressive work for your age, or any age, of course.
The continuum fallacy is a logical fallacy that occurs when someone argues that two states or conditions are not distinct because there is a continuum between them.
Great presentation. It seems to me that the person asking questions is making a point that doesn't contradict what the speaker is saying. The distinctions they're citing do actually exist in reality - as they suggest - but that's because any arbitrary distinction *exists* depending on the criteria you choose. It seems like the "five different types of snow" is a distinction that does accurately reflect a physical reality with physical consequences. The mistake is assuming that there is any finite, smallest, or "correct" way to divide physical reality into linguistic descriptions. But that doesn't mean that our words don't reflect some real physical distinction, however arbitrary.
For example, most molecules of snow will have different amounts of dissolved chemicals and ions which makes it physically different, but this physical difference is not something that's functionally important, or even perceivable to us on a human scale most of the time.
@@Will-wb6xl no you go on to contradict yourself. Your last sentence attempts to provide a reasoning for why some differences are important. If there is a reason the grouping/categorization is no longer arbitrary. Which is what the dude asking the questions was trying to explain. You can't just say we divide things as we please, because there's often a very good reason why we did the things we did.
Also the dude asking questions never said there was a "correct" way to do things. He just pointed out that the differences in the vocabulary exist not for some arbitrary reason and that simply grouping something together doesn't make the differences disappear because (1) the difference is intrinsic to the object, (2) just because the difference is inconsequential doesn't mean the difference is no longer there.
@@kbee225 I think I see the confusion. There’s no contradiction. I was not attempting to say anything was "important", that’s an overly anthropocentric reading of my comment (also the view of the questioner in the video). Things that are "important" to humans are absolutely arbitrary in terms of physics - and it’s this relationship between pure physical reality and language that’s the point of discussion, not between language and utility which is what you're implying. The reasons humans have for making distinctions between physical objects are based in physical reality but not intrinsic to it.
The point is that physical reality is on a spectrum and language has to make arbitrary distinctions. How many hairs do you have to gain in order not to be considered “bald” anymore? When does a “pile” become a “hill”? Are your fingernails “you” or “part of you”? What about after you cut them?
The last sentence of my last comment was meant to show that when you say the word “snow” or more specifically “H2O”, the actual physical object you’re referring to almost never perfectly reflects the idealized concept of it in your mind.
The other guy arguing w you is right becouse you use the words as a concept of categorizatoin but giving it a name is not the only way to categorize it. Different peoples, different brains and different types of percepting things... I can tell that w my perception of categorizing things its not even doing anything with words or letters etc. I categorizing things with their concepts. İts hard to explain and i know i explained it very bad but its kinda different. However what you say is true either bc language is a tool to link everyones perception in one.
And olso perception itself is a spectrum. That guy at the background said sound and sight .For example vibration is sound aproximately around 20 to 20k hz but at 562×10¹² hz its colour blue.
The last example is a false equivalency. Not all frequencies are the same. In light the frequency is measured through fluctuations in the electromagnetic field. In the case of sound it is measured as a fluctuation of pressure. Those two things are VERY different. A better example would be comparing just different wavelengths of light. While 550nm is green and visible. 1000nm(infrared) is invisible and can be perceived as warmth.
But the idea that perception is a spectrum also aids the main speakers point.
Language absolutely has an effect on perception, but it obviously isn't the only thing we use to perceive things. If it were the case that language exclusively dictated our perception, then we wouldn't be able to notice distinctions without them. That's an obvious point that the kid should have noted and didn't, but that also doesn't make him any less correct.
Most languages have feminine and masculine versions of words, that is a fundamental difference which would impact how a person would contextualize a statement. This is also why translation is so difficult. Translators are practically authors of their own, as they have to understand material so intuitively so that they may recontextualize it in another language and maintain the original message to the best of their ability whilst also making the text sound natural.
Two interesting things to consider are ofcs the ability to categorize things without language - animals do this with different plants for survival, but also the fact that distinction exists in physics regardless of gradients existing. There a hard and fast distinction between electromagnetism and gravity for example which is inherent in the world, so are different quantum states for electrons.
He was talking about the colors all the time. Yes, color is spectral, but not all things. Take fruits, there're various types of apple, so as banana, they are somehow continuous within their own breed. But you cannot find a breed between apple and banana, say, a 70% apple + 30% banana, or any given point at the continuity between banana and apple. Or our body, we have a nose and two eyes, but there is nothing on our face to be a 60% nose and 40% eye, they are not continuous. That is why different languages identify them MOSTLY in the same way. I know the philosophy he was talking about, but I don't think it's as absolute as they claim, that everything or every concept is contributed by people.
Good point. I also wouldn’t say that everything is a spectrum. This is just what the philosophy talks about. However, even if not everything is a spectrum, a lot of things are, including all physical objects.
When we talk about spectrum we don’t mean that things blend into each other. They don’t, but instead imagine a million fruits, each slightly genetically different. No two fruits will be the same, and at some point, we will stop identifying the fruit as an apple but rather as something else. If we keep going then the fruit will become eventually become a banana. The point is, between any two things, there is an infinite list of things that are slightly different which eventually connects the two things. That is what they mean by gradient.
I hope this clears up the video :) I don’t doubt that my explanation isn’t perfect. It probably isn’t lol. I’m glad you took the time to review it 👍
@@ACGethicsclub Yes, I know what you mean. But my point is, even if we keep going along the apple variants, there is still a huge gap between apples and bananas, there is actually no such a fruit that equally close to both sides, so that could be arbitarily categorized.
But what I agree is that different languages do have different ways of grouping things. Maybe in some language there is a word for apple and banana as a whole, but leave other fruits excluded, while we just distinguish them. In that case, the difference between languages at naming colors could be also considered a kind of difference at grouping.
Hope I'm clear this time XD
Another example, do you think chemical elements were actually continuous, but people created the boundaries between them? I don't think so. The difference between elements should be absolute, according to the number of their protons. That number is discrete and could not be continuous in anyway, right?
@@hasutailiu5392 Yes definitely. Great point. Again, i personally don’t think everything is a continuum.
However with that said, the macro world is pretty different. No two objects are made of the same arrangement of chemicals. You definitely have a point in that chemicals can be precisely defined. But consider that most apples do not have the same chemical makeup. Yet we call them all apples to certain extent, until it becomes so chemically different that it becomes another fruit. We can draw that line anywhere, really.
The point is not that everything is a continuum, only some things are. And in the things that can be proven to be a continuum, this theory of language applies.
This is what I believe Derrida would argue. I could always be wrong.
@@ACGethicsclub I got it. In that case, well, I think you're right
Word define themselves
Each word assigned to a number
Each number assigned to a perception
First of all, great talk! It would be interesting to expand the discussion to things like emotion rationalization, the usage of emojis, memes, and other "mute" symbols.
But anyways, just commenting to put my two cents in:
I think the other person had an interesting contribution, but the speaker (which I'm gonna refer to "you") wasn't open and flexible enough to reflect with them.
See, you introduced the idea that `all language artifacts shape our perception of reality in some way`. Yeah, we're with you, we got this part, great, but this doesn't imply that `our perception of reality is entirely shaped by language`.
Our central unit of language processing is located in the left hemisphere of our brain, while the right hemisphere is linked with things like emotions recognition and spatial intelligence. What do you think happens in epilepsy patients that undergoe corpus callosotomy (a surgery that cuts the estructure responsible to make left-right brain communication)? Well, I highly suggest looking up for experiments with these patients, it will certainly open up your mind to different ways of experimenting and making sense of reality.
Think about motor skills, for example. You don't need to name all the little different variations of table tennis racket handling to know how to react to certain in-game situations, because you have _muscle memory_ in your favor. The athlete for sure makes distictions between all of them, but they're not necessarily "rationalized" and thought through with the agglutination of phonemes. Hence the idea that our reality is also influenced by other things apart from language, even though all language influence our reality.
Hi, thanks for the suggestions! The psychology experiments were very interesting.
But of course, our reality is not solely influenced by language. Language, as far as this philosophy is concerned, only affects how we percieve differences between things and how we categorize them.
Yeah, and it's not a stick one directional influence either. Perception can influence language over time as well.
To use the example of the dude in the audience, that touching yellow snow kills you or whatever.. So he's trying to get at the idea that there are distinctions that exist already that people then come up with words for.
BUT that example actually requires, as the presenter is trying to illustrate, for somethings to be considered yellow and some things not to be. And those things, those distinctions that we find culturally important enough to make, then get reflected in our language. And therefore can also reflect which distinctions are not culturally relevant enough to make.
This is well-worded
Hi, I’m actually the person who asked the questions. I disagree with the premise in its entirety. If I were to find for example an example that requires zero words whatsoever to define differences I could easily bring up the fact gorillas can tell apart bananas from apples.
This does however not mean that I disagree with the reflection of cultural distinctions in language. In the moment however, the speakers case implied that without language, distinctions would just cease to exist.
To clarify the premise I find specifically troubling is simply the deterministic value of language.
‘The great Eskimo vocabulary hoax, and other irreverent essays on the study of language’
by Geoffrey K. Pullum is a great book that criticises many linguistic theories (I believe chapter 7 was the most relevant but I can’t remember)
@@Neeedscheeeese I think you miss the intention of the philosophical argument. He was using examples to illustrate how human use language ( actually symbol or sign might be a better word) to organise themselves in human society. It does not concern itself with the true nature of existing material things.
It is not so much that without language, distinctions would just cease to exist but rather true distintiction can only arise when it is functionally useful to give it a name for your community. For scientific comunity it might be a new theory or concept. For a chef it might be a new dish that is being added to the menu. Most impotantly this theory is trying to say the idea of what count as distinctive is ultimately arbitrary.
Hence why we need to becareful of the deterministic value of language. The speaker used a good example of pink and girl. Where does this association comes from? We think there is inherent quality to those relation just like how some cultures think there is inherent quality to 2 different colours, but there is no true law of physics that said pink belongs to girl or what this is red that is pink.
@@Neeedscheeeese Exactly! Smells for instance. (English is notoriously weak in vocabulary for smells). You can say there is a difference between the smell of an orange and an apple and without being able to articulate what the difference is. The differences are intrinsic, we are biased by societal and cultural norms (or also as you said, evolutionary pressure) to "focus" on certain differences and to overlook some others. Arguing that the differences are imparted by the words is a logical fallacy.
@@smc9207 no that's factually incorrect. You can't say the differences only materialize when we create a vocabulary for them. You may be able to discern the difference in flavor between individuals of the same group. For eg, you can tell not all apples taste the same, even those of the same variety and within the same range of ripeness.
And I also reject your premise that philosophy is not concerned with logic or science. That's just not true. Logic itself is a product of philosophy.
So you’re basically saying humans say red is red because it’s different from blue?
banna
“banna”
On
nothing exists in isolation, compartmentalzing the whole.
@@Zero-fh2wb what do you mean? It can be argued that abstract isolation is how a concept exists. If nothing is isolated, then there is no difference between your thoughts and mine. And ergo, we would not really have discernable identities.
@@kbee225 we have different ideas of isolation, you can only distinguish your idea, in relation to there being different ideas existing. there is a necessary other in order to distinguish something. just because something is distinguished doesnt mean it is isolated. and just because it isnt isolated, doesnt mean they're one and the same. light and dark dont exist in isolation, we understand what is dark through a lack of light, and we understand what is light through a lack of whats dark. they dont exist in isolation, they exist in relation, and it is through existing in relation, that they are able to be distinguished. If they truly existed in isolation, as in, nothing else existed but it, then everything would be dark, or everything would be bright, and nothing would distinguish it.
thats what i mean when i say nothing exists in isolation. sure you can isolate its existence, but you can only isolate its existence if it exists in relation to other things to isolate it from.
Good on you for putting the video up. In regards to the video, that’s why things like branding matters.
5:47 I don’t get your thinking. Naming slightly different pasta skibidi pasta doesn’t make it not pasta. It’s just what you said it was: slightly different PASTA.
@@suburbanburrito210 yeah except what he said isn't how it works in reality. Language is a social construct and thus changes can only be made by a "group" and not by an individual. He can choose to call it whatever he wants, but for it to penetrate the language it needs to be accepted by society. And that acceptance is often based on pragmatic reasons. For eg., if a social group has to refer to that specific pasta frequently in day to day life, it becomes easier to give it a discerning name. Else, there's no reason why I shouldn't use the collective term to simply say "I had spaghetti for dinner".
Ergo, what he's saying is if he gives it a different name, people will start seeing it as a different pasta. But in reality, it's the other way around, it gets a different name ONLY if there's a consequential difference. For eg, angel hair pasta is a thinner type of spaghetti, but it's differentiated because you have to adjust the cook time between regular spaghetti and angel hair pasta.
I am more interested in the opposite. Do language restrict one way of thinking? Say English have a specific grammar to indicate past, present and future. But some language don't have that. Does that mean they always live in the present so they can't do long term planning?
The answer after years of research are no. Thinking is seperate from language. Cognitive function are much more hardwire than language can express. That's why the mute, deaf or blind don't perceive the differently than the rest of us.
Hopi live in present
Words do shape reality because people rely off of assumptions. Because you are a man, these traits follow. Prescriptivism of genders dictates what each gender is to do based off of its essence as a gendered object. Descriptivism defines what a words means by what it is or does. If a woman decides to be an engineer instead of a housewife, they are descriptively defining the traits of a woman rather than following the prescribed traits. Existence precedes essence, descriptivism is the way of the future and prescriptivism does nothing but fence us in. People with small minds need predictability and will enforce the status quo onto others (but only if it fits their agenda).
In analytic philosophy this topic is called the problem of natural kinds. We suppose things can be different in kind (apple vs banana) and they can be different in degree (banana with some spots vs banana with a lot of spots), but is there a sense in which things are _naturally_ different in kind? A more serious example are fundamental particles, it seems like if we are to be committed to scientific realism then we must accept particles are natural kinds. There is no “half electron” they are always distinct from another particle, and there is no variation between individual electrons.
The term "word" should be replaced with "symbol" in the argument with the student asking great questions. Words of course are symbols. But symbols are not always words. They are signifiers of concepts. Symbols can be non-verbal. You would not have to learn the language in order to be able to conceive of the idea that yellow snow kills you. But the mind will generate a port, let's say, for a word. That port is the symbol for yellow snow and how it kills you. So we need symbols for "death", "health," "punch," "yellow," "snow," to be "online" before we can create a grouping of these more irreducible symbols which enables the chunking together of a symbol that shortcut-signifies, "yellow snow kills you." Or, as I would like to suggest (and what makes a great post-punk band name), it allows you to define Danger Snow. The student was actually on to something very important. Difference is not perception-dependent. Perception of Difference is perception-dependent. This is not mind-blowing. It is a trivial truth. Yellow snow contains Differences from white snow, irregardless of an observer. What is trying to be put forth is the important concept that: an observer's capacity for identifying Difference can never break from the web of interrelation that constitutes their internal language. Both things are true, the teacher's general bent, and the student's. The meta-dynamic that is on display here, however, is that the teacher role is interruptive and impulsive to the student role which is prodding and curious. Ironically, this dynamic of master-slave, or authority and nascency is what shaves away at our capacity for generating our own symbologies.
Great work brother!!!!!
Numbers are the objective reality tho
Sorry, but the experimental evidence in support of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is extremely thin. The fact that this example of color discrimination is still the go-to example after a century of investigation and the actual experimental effect was shown to be weak is very telling. Even if the results were strong, you would only have this one function, discriminating shades of blue, which is such a trivial task and could probably be learned in a matter of minutes by a nonverbal person or even a rodent.
I’m not trying to insult these philosophers but I hope the new generation will approach this idea of language affecting perception with much greater skepticism. Language is one way the brain labels the sensory world, but it is far from the whole story.
Why is this in my recommended lol
For some reason, the algorithm thinks the topic will catch my attention...? And yes, it succeeded.
Great presentation
The whole Greeks didn’t see blue thing is debunked.
Thank you
Skibidi spagetti 5:40 ahahhah this guy scrolling tiktok at least 1 hours a day
He is teaching good though
That sh*t isn’t bubble gum pink!!!
Hoodie way too big
gang shit
“For God so loved the world that he gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” - John 3:16 Jesus loves you and died for you on the cross. He did this to wash away the burden of sins, and if you open your heart to Him, He can take away the burden and give you a peace incomparable to anything in this world. God bless everyone here. ✝✝🙏
The eye can’t see what the lip won’t speak
Spit your truth, inner gaze perceive
The space amidst the spiral where the branch meets leaf
Beyond the surface content be the space between