Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Knight of Fools]

I learned to speak Spanish fluently a couple of years ago (Live or die instant immersion), and while it played with my perception a little bit by opening new ways of expressing things, it didn't really affect how I perceived reality in general.  In the least, it wasn't earth-shaking enough to be noticeable.

I think someone who had zero linguistic ability would still be able to think abstractly, because we still have the ability to imagine things that happen.  One thing that I've noticed after learning Spanish is that my mind gears more towards images than words, but that may just be me in the first place, or it may be that I have two ways I can express things so I just go the route of using neither.

Really, the only thing that we can't do without language is interact with each other.  We can do math just fine without language (Through imagery), and even philosophical stuff is possible to think of through images or emotions.  The only thing we wouldn't be able to do is tell each other the cool things we've thought of, since everything would essentially have to emerge from our own minds.  Everything exists regardless of whether or not there's a word for it, but because of the human need to quantify everything and express it, and the continued discovery of so much different stuff and so many ways of thinking, language has become incredibly complicated and perhaps even a crutch to original thinking.

So, basically, someone wanted to tell someone about the cool idea about thinking, therefore being, to his friend, so he invented language so his friend could think about it too.  After that, people started talking more than thinking, queue modern era.

[Svampapa]

This is the problem though, most of us on these boards are germanic or italic language speakers. While they are two separate branches on the language tree, they have still evolved within a fairly closed geographic area and within an interacting population. 

That's why I began thinking in terms of math as a language. Perhaps not as a spoken language, but a written one. It is completely different than any other language on Earth, created for the need to explain the world around us. Thus knowing it or not would most likely affect how you percieve things.

[Strife26]

The problem is that math exists only to work with quantifiable things, while any language is going to be able to describe said things just as well (although almost always resorting to something which'd be considered math). I'd expect any differences to come out of qualitative type thing instead.

[Earthquake Damage]

That's why I began thinking in terms of math as a language. Perhaps not as a spoken language, but a written one. It is completely different than any other language on Earth, created for the need to explain the world around us. Thus knowing it or not would most likely affect how you percieve things.

I won't argue whether math affects perception.  However, though it has its own notation and jargon, as does any field of study, I wouldn't say "math affects perception because it is language."  You might be trying to make a connection that isn't there.

[Puzzlemaker]

I am learning sign languages in school right now, and it does tend to change how you perceive reality.

If you are talking about someone, you point at them.  If you are talking about someone who isn't there, you point at an empty spot, and then throughout the conversation you refer to that spot as that person.  Giving directions or dealing with maps is also different.  It's very interesting.

[Hubris Incalculable]

I think we can expect novel differences between the thought patterns of different language speaking people as life goes on.

This gave me an idea: Take equally sized groups of people who speak different languages, but have similar cultural backgrounds (i.e. Europeans), and have each of them explain, out loud, several simple concepts (such as love, life, death, etc.), while they are connected to an electroencephalograph. If there is little to no difference between the readings for each language group, then it can be assumed that language does NOT affect perception. However, if there are clear and distinct differences between language groups, then it may be taken that language DOES affect perception.

[chaoticag]

Buh, mistyped that,  I meant to say less differences would pop up, since the world is closer together than it ever was. And I would not classify "european" as a similar cultural background.

[Strife26]

I think we can expect novel differences between the thought patterns of different language speaking people as life goes on.

This gave me an idea: Take equally sized groups of people who speak different languages, but have similar cultural backgrounds (i.e. Europeans), and have each of them explain, out loud, several simple concepts (such as love, life, death, etc.), while they are connected to an electroencephalograph. If there is little to no difference between the readings for each language group, then it can be assumed that language does NOT affect perception. However, if there are clear and distinct differences between language groups, then it may be taken that language DOES affect perception.

You'd never get close enough cultures, just because language is so closely related to culture. You'd need to raise people in a vacuum to get good date, and that hardly works.

[Hubris Incalculable]

And I would not classify "european" as a similar cultural background.

It was the closest i could think of that had multiple languages (and even language families). Their cultures are more similar than (say) Australian Aboriginal and Malagasi.

[ChairmanPoo]

I think that European cultures are more alike than unalike

[fqllve]

That's why I began thinking in terms of math as a language. Perhaps not as a spoken language, but a written one. It is completely different than any other language on Earth, created for the need to explain the world around us. Thus knowing it or not would most likely affect how you percieve things.

I won't argue whether math affects perception.  However, though it has its own notation and jargon, as does any field of study, I wouldn't say "math affects perception because it is language."  You might be trying to make a connection that isn't there.

Math isn't language, but math and language are two different types of the same thing. Systems that bind concepts to symbols. But neither of them affect perception, they affect how we reflect on the things we perceive. If I see five cups not knowing the concept of five does not affect how I perceive them, only how I categorize them within my conceptual framework.

[Vector]

Math is a form of language.

Pictures are a form of language.

Clothing is a form of language.

Anything that attaches some sign to a concept is language.

[fqllve]

Hehehe.

Only if you use language to mean semiotic system.

I wouldn't because I think it's a little misleading.

[Kusgnos]

I read through this thread expecting someone to bring up linguistic relativity and the weak Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. There are vast swathes of research on this topic from both linguistic and cognitive science fields, but as far as I know it's still quite an open question. Language has some effect on a person's perception of the world around them, but the exact intricacies haven't been pinned down. You guys have probably heard of the color study done a few years ago.

[sonerohi]

Yes that was the point of the article and page two of the thread.
I feel that the issue is not so much perception but how much people care. The Indonesian speakers might have been fully aware of the differences in time, but didn't talk about them because the way they talk, the time was a non-issue and other details were stressed. I didn't see anything that seemed to say that during the questioning, they were asked about the time of the actions. In their thought, it might be "Well, this guy is at a different segment, but it is the same action so it is the same", while the English speakers thought "It is the same thing but at different parts so it is different". All the information is received and examined, but taken differently sort of.