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Hmm, I think it makes a lot of sense that a language would govern your thought patterns. This happens in software, you are limited in what you can create and do

by lukevp 6y ago

Hmm, I think it makes a lot of sense that a language would govern your thought patterns. This happens in software, you are limited in what you can create and do by what concepts you can easily express, why wouldn’t this be true for language? I truly want to know because I have heard this many times and believed it, but if there’s no evidence I’d need to reevaluate.

olah_1 6y ago
> This happens in software, you are limited in what you can create and do by what concepts you can easily express Even this is rare in software. For example, I recall reading a blog "Why Python is a Lisp" or something. And it basically destroyed this idea that Lisp was some magical insane language because the author did all the lisp things except they used python. But yes, in some of the minor claims, I think there's some credence to the idea. But the idea that one language is incapable of understanding concepts in another is unfounded.
wenc 6y ago
I used to think so too but I once did a little thought experiment, and while it seems to be true that language influences our thought patterns, I'm not sure if it necessarily limits them. Empirically, we are able to think thoughts and feel things that we cannot describe in words. I know I'm able to feel ennui, limerence, or hygge without knowing these words. I can also perceive things and states without necessarily being able to describe them precisely with single words (but I could probably describe them approximately with many words) The classic example is that the Inuit have many words for different types of snow -- implicit in this example is that they are able to recognize different types of snow and have codified them into shared symbols (words). But to me, that doesn't mean the rest of us who don't have those words cannot perceive the same if we'd lived in the same environment. Children can tell packing snow from sleet from a dusting even without knowing the words. There's an industry of people romanticizing certain words in a foreign culture, claiming them to be untranslatable, and then writing books/articles about them. Not all of this is without merit, but I believe that the words themselves aren't so much untranslatable, but that they have no compact representation outside of a certain cultural context. Words are compressions of meaning, but meaning can be perceived outside of verbal representation, or even language. It seems to me one can look at a picture or taste a meal or listen to instrumental music and perceive and manipulate meaning through no use of language at all.
whatatita 6y ago
I think this rationale is largely conflated with the idea that the laguage we speak dictates how we think. As others have mentioned, this is largely considered a falacy nowadays. The most obvious argument against this is that you can very easily conceive of something but be unable to articulate it. You can _think_ something but be unable to _put it into words_. Given this, it stands to reason that thought =/= language. Similarly, new words are coined all the time to refer to new and original ideas, these ideas must - if you believe language dictates what we can conceive - be impossible to form. If you're interested in this subject, I can strongly recommend The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker. (It's available on Kindle and there's plently of 2nd hand paperbacks online too.)
adrianmonk 6y ago
> This happens in software, you are limited in what you can create and do by what concepts you can easily express Because the computer isn't really thinking. It's just mechanically following what the language says. So of course what you can do is limited by what the language can express, because that's all there is. Human minds don't seem to be the same. They can have ideas without necessarily needing to start with language to build the idea on. For one thing, we've all experienced having a thought but being unable to think of the word for it. Despite being unable to articulate it, you can look in the dictionary at possible words and tell from their definitions whether they match. You could say that this is just our brains thinking in terms of that word without being able to recall its concrete form. (The essential meaning of a word and the spelling/sound of it might be handled separately by the brain.) Maybe that's why sometimes, but it's also possible to have a thought and not know that there is a word for it. You might tell a friend about someone who has an annoying habit of rigidly following and enforcing the rules even when that serves no constructive purpose, and your friend might tell you that's called being legalistic. Still, you could argue that's still language-based thought because all you did was compose together several pieces of language ("rigidly following", "constructive purpose", etc.), and that your new vocabulary word is really just a shorthand for that composition. Maybe that is true for some words, but it can't be true for all of them. If words can only be introduced by reference to language, then there's no way language could have formed in the first place. There must have been a first word. Another approach is a thought experiment: does a feral child (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child) have thoughts? If a human grows up with no exposure to language, that will have profound effects on them, but I don't think those effects go as far as making it impossible to have thoughts. Having said all that, do I think that language heavily influences thinking? Definitely. For one thing, exposure (and non-exposure) to certain ideas has a big influence on thinking. Words convey ideas, and when you learn a word, you learn its idea. It may also be true that ideas are easier to think about (internally) if they have a corresponding word. And it's certainly easier to discuss ideas if there are words for them, so those ideas will be discussed more often.

by lukevp 6y ago

olah_1 6y ago

> This happens in software, you are limited in what you can create and do by what concepts you can easily express Even this is rare in software. For example, I recall reading a blog "Why Python is a Lisp" or something. And it basically destroyed this idea that Lisp was some magical insane language because the author did all the lisp things except they used python. But yes, in some of the minor claims, I think there's some credence to the idea. But the idea that one language is incapable of understanding concepts in another is unfounded.

wenc 6y ago

I used to think so too but I once did a little thought experiment, and while it seems to be true that language influences our thought patterns, I'm not sure if it necessarily limits them. Empirically, we are able to think thoughts and feel things that we cannot describe in words. I know I'm able to feel ennui, limerence, or hygge without knowing these words. I can also perceive things and states without necessarily being able to describe them precisely with single words (but I could probably describe them approximately with many words) The classic example is that the Inuit have many words for different types of snow -- implicit in this example is that they are able to recognize different types of snow and have codified them into shared symbols (words). But to me, that doesn't mean the rest of us who don't have those words cannot perceive the same if we'd lived in the same environment. Children can tell packing snow from sleet from a dusting even without knowing the words. There's an industry of people romanticizing certain words in a foreign culture, claiming them to be untranslatable, and then writing books/articles about them. Not all of this is without merit, but I believe that the words themselves aren't so much untranslatable, but that they have no compact representation outside of a certain cultural context. Words are compressions of meaning, but meaning can be perceived outside of verbal representation, or even language. It seems to me one can look at a picture or taste a meal or listen to instrumental music and perceive and manipulate meaning through no use of language at all.

whatatita 6y ago

I think this rationale is largely conflated with the idea that the laguage we speak dictates how we think. As others have mentioned, this is largely considered a falacy nowadays. The most obvious argument against this is that you can very easily conceive of something but be unable to articulate it. You can _think_ something but be unable to _put it into words_. Given this, it stands to reason that thought =/= language. Similarly, new words are coined all the time to refer to new and original ideas, these ideas must - if you believe language dictates what we can conceive - be impossible to form. If you're interested in this subject, I can strongly recommend The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker. (It's available on Kindle and there's plently of 2nd hand paperbacks online too.)

adrianmonk 6y ago

> This happens in software, you are limited in what you can create and do by what concepts you can easily express Because the computer isn't really thinking. It's just mechanically following what the language says. So of course what you can do is limited by what the language can express, because that's all there is. Human minds don't seem to be the same. They can have ideas without necessarily needing to start with language to build the idea on. For one thing, we've all experienced having a thought but being unable to think of the word for it. Despite being unable to articulate it, you can look in the dictionary at possible words and tell from their definitions whether they match. You could say that this is just our brains thinking in terms of that word without being able to recall its concrete form. (The essential meaning of a word and the spelling/sound of it might be handled separately by the brain.) Maybe that's why sometimes, but it's also possible to have a thought and not know that there is a word for it. You might tell a friend about someone who has an annoying habit of rigidly following and enforcing the rules even when that serves no constructive purpose, and your friend might tell you that's called being legalistic. Still, you could argue that's still language-based thought because all you did was compose together several pieces of language ("rigidly following", "constructive purpose", etc.), and that your new vocabulary word is really just a shorthand for that composition. Maybe that is true for some words, but it can't be true for all of them. If words can only be introduced by reference to language, then there's no way language could have formed in the first place. There must have been a first word. Another approach is a thought experiment: does a feral child (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child) have thoughts? If a human grows up with no exposure to language, that will have profound effects on them, but I don't think those effects go as far as making it impossible to have thoughts. Having said all that, do I think that language heavily influences thinking? Definitely. For one thing, exposure (and non-exposure) to certain ideas has a big influence on thinking. Words convey ideas, and when you learn a word, you learn its idea. It may also be true that ideas are easier to think about (internally) if they have a corresponding word. And it's certainly easier to discuss ideas if there are words for them, so those ideas will be discussed more often.