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The idea that you can't perceive something unless you have a word for it is ridiculous. Every face I see walking down the street looks different, even though m
by woodandsteel 11y ago
The idea that you can't perceive something unless you have a word for it is ridiculous. Every face I see walking down the street looks different, even though my vocabulary for describing faces is not remotely adequate for the various unique shapes. Or how about when you smell something you can't identify? In fact, the way words get invented, very often, is we perceive something we don't have a word for, so we make up a new one. And as far as blue goes, thanks to millions of years of primate evolution, our eyes have perceptors for blue. Were they just useless until the last few hundred years?
The people who push these sorts of ideas are operating out of a theory known as social constructivism, which holds there is nothing universal in human cognition or motivation, is all taught by society. But lots of research, like with infants, shows that is not true. Social constructivists ignore the science because they are pushing a utopianist left-wing ideology that holds that we can re-make human psychology and have a perfect society.
- ZeroGravitas 11y agoI believe that research shows that people have more difficulty distinguishing faces they didn't grow up seeing, which seems analogous to what the research this article is based on is saying. I wouldn't be surprised to hear the same about smells, the example of wine experts is one potential example. I'm wondering how much the reaction to the article is conditioned by the overreaching headline.
- erikpukinskis 11y ago> The idea that you can't perceive something unless you have a word for it is ridiculous. That's not the idea. The idea is that if you don't interact with something you can't perceive it, and if you can't perceive it you won't have a word for it. > our eyes have perceptors for blue. Were they just useless until the last few hundred years? They can be used to used to disambiguate other categories besides blue. For example, you would use your blue receptors to differentiate forest green and aquamarine. But aquamarine and cobalt might look exactly the same to you. Every individual will see a slightly different set of categories based on their experiences. The world has infinite information, and categories don't actually exist in the world. They are just something we form in our minds through interaction with things that do exist. If a category doesn't signify anything useful to a creature, that creature won't perceive the category at all. It doesn't mean their receptors aren't picking up the information. It just means the perceptual system is disregarding it as noise.