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I thought the majority of sapir-whorf thought had been disproven and at best only a mild amount had support? At least, that's what I remember learning in my li

I thought the majority of sapir-whorf thought had been disproven and at best only a mild amount had support? At least, that's what I remember learning in my linguistics courses in college. I'm willing to be wrong.

throwaway91111 9y ago
You have to look at how it was initially positioned. Linguistic determinism as a general purpose tool has not proved to be useful, but it doesn't mean that there isn't clear linguistic determinism in certain areas. Colors may be the easiest way to see some limited sapir-whorf in action.
yathern 9y ago
You're probably right - I actually suspected that may be the case - though I was only using that as a parallelism for what I'm saying. Language, in my understanding, operates at a lower level of abstraction in the brain than say, Math. I would suspect that Spacial Reasoning is similarly low-level. It would be interesting to see if there is any impact to the higher-level reasoning when the foundational blocks are played with. The difference probably wouldn't be very large, I'm now realizing. People who are blind since birth, as far as I know, don't have any observable differences in common patterns of thought. And that seems like a larger difference in low-level thought than being able to understand four dimensions versus three. (Not suggesting blind people lack spacial reasoning in three dimensions)
- d0mine 9y ago
  The way people think about the same things ("translation schemes") can be different (blind or not). As an experiment, try to measure a minute by counting and doing something else http://youtu.be/lr8sVailoLw http://youtu.be/lr8sVailoLw
js8 9y ago
SW might have been disproven, but in this case, I think it would make a difference. I think if you had to have 4D vision rather than 3D, it would require much more processing power and memory to account for the extra dimension. So I think at minimum, a being that is capable of thinking in 4D would have to have higher brain capacity than a being that thinks just in 3D. And there is some strong evidence that our ability to navigate 3D world influences our general cognitive capabilities. For example, consider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci
- andai 9y ago
  Could you please explain how the ability to navigate 3D world influences our general cognitive capabilities?
SolarNet 9y ago
I think the problem is that the mild amount of support was the only claim it was ever making. It was everyone else who blew it out of proportion. It's like the whole thing with CERN making micro black holes, and everyone freaking out about a black hole eating the solar system.

throwaway91111 9y ago

You have to look at how it was initially positioned. Linguistic determinism as a general purpose tool has not proved to be useful, but it doesn't mean that there isn't clear linguistic determinism in certain areas. Colors may be the easiest way to see some limited sapir-whorf in action.

yathern 9y ago

You're probably right - I actually suspected that may be the case - though I was only using that as a parallelism for what I'm saying. Language, in my understanding, operates at a lower level of abstraction in the brain than say, Math. I would suspect that Spacial Reasoning is similarly low-level. It would be interesting to see if there is any impact to the higher-level reasoning when the foundational blocks are played with. The difference probably wouldn't be very large, I'm now realizing. People who are blind since birth, as far as I know, don't have any observable differences in common patterns of thought. And that seems like a larger difference in low-level thought than being able to understand four dimensions versus three. (Not suggesting blind people lack spacial reasoning in three dimensions)

d0mine 9y ago
The way people think about the same things ("translation schemes") can be different (blind or not). As an experiment, try to measure a minute by counting and doing something else http://youtu.be/lr8sVailoLw http://youtu.be/lr8sVailoLw

js8 9y ago

SW might have been disproven, but in this case, I think it would make a difference. I think if you had to have 4D vision rather than 3D, it would require much more processing power and memory to account for the extra dimension. So I think at minimum, a being that is capable of thinking in 4D would have to have higher brain capacity than a being that thinks just in 3D. And there is some strong evidence that our ability to navigate 3D world influences our general cognitive capabilities. For example, consider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci

andai 9y ago
Could you please explain how the ability to navigate 3D world influences our general cognitive capabilities?

SolarNet 9y ago

I think the problem is that the mild amount of support was the only claim it was ever making. It was everyone else who blew it out of proportion. It's like the whole thing with CERN making micro black holes, and everyone freaking out about a black hole eating the solar system.