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Our language and our knowledge about the world are both moving targets. For example, people rarely use the word 'sin' nowadays to scold others for unaccepted be

by wsy 9y ago

Our language and our knowledge about the world are both moving targets. For example, people rarely use the word 'sin' nowadays to scold others for unaccepted behavior. But 200 years ago, 'sin' was a generally accepted concept, as real as 'addiction' is today. In addition, great thinkers often struggled to express their innovative thoughts, and invented new terminology for that purpose. This new terminology then became part of our language over time, in lock-step with the new ideas expressed by it. So I think inferring reality structure from from language structure is a fallacy.

iamnothere 9y ago
Completely agree. It's worth reading older literature to see this effect first-hand! To add to your point, language frames reality through its structure, and meaningful concepts that are "missing" from a language may be missing from conversations in that language. For instance, the Pirahã language has no concept of numbers or time! English itself is missing some nice features, such as efficient agglutinative words (backpfeifengesicht) and emotional context added to words (perrazo vs perro). I don't know if any language does these concepts well: * Relative positioning in greater than three dimensions * Quick and clear way to indicate that a point being made applies universally versus being limited to the current context under discussion (and vice-versa). You could do this with a separate statement but it would get tiring very quickly. * Clear and efficient expression of degree of certitude. For instance, being able to convey how much evidence you have for an argument, or being able to express a statement as purely speculative, without having to explicitly append that as a separate statement. * An elegant way to "tag" a statement as metaphor, or even as being an intentional oversimplification for the purpose of brevity. We may solve some of these gaps over time. After all, the internet brought us "/s", which I both despise and grudgingly accept as necessary. In terms of this discussion, perhaps what we're missing is a suffix that indicates whether or not we're using a word in a slightly different way than is traditionally intended. I see this all the time, especially in philosophy, and it can be incredibly frustrating for the reader. It's an issue in politics as well, but good luck solving that one.

by wsy 9y ago

iamnothere 9y ago

Completely agree. It's worth reading older literature to see this effect first-hand! To add to your point, language frames reality through its structure, and meaningful concepts that are "missing" from a language may be missing from conversations in that language. For instance, the Pirahã language has no concept of numbers or time! English itself is missing some nice features, such as efficient agglutinative words (backpfeifengesicht) and emotional context added to words (perrazo vs perro). I don't know if any language does these concepts well: * Relative positioning in greater than three dimensions * Quick and clear way to indicate that a point being made applies universally versus being limited to the current context under discussion (and vice-versa). You could do this with a separate statement but it would get tiring very quickly. * Clear and efficient expression of degree of certitude. For instance, being able to convey how much evidence you have for an argument, or being able to express a statement as purely speculative, without having to explicitly append that as a separate statement. * An elegant way to "tag" a statement as metaphor, or even as being an intentional oversimplification for the purpose of brevity. We may solve some of these gaps over time. After all, the internet brought us "/s", which I both despise and grudgingly accept as necessary. In terms of this discussion, perhaps what we're missing is a suffix that indicates whether or not we're using a word in a slightly different way than is traditionally intended. I see this all the time, especially in philosophy, and it can be incredibly frustrating for the reader. It's an issue in politics as well, but good luck solving that one.