In English alone, when i leave my home and studio, its a different world. ab
On Feb 12, 2013, at 12:31 PM, [email protected] wrote: > In a message dated 2/7/13 6:10:15 PM, [email protected] writes: > > "If we used a different vocabulary or if we spoke a different language, we > would perceive a somewhat different world." > > >> *(from: Recent Experiments in Psychology* (1950) by Leland Whitney >> Crafts, >> Thiodore Christian Schneirla, and Elsa Elizabeth Robinson) >> >> Agree/disagree? >> >> This would-be profundity is far too vague to yield fruitful discussion. The > phrase "we would perceive a somewhat different world" is bound to occasion > all sorts of different notions, hazy "interpretations", in the minds of > various readers. Off this little evidence of what the writer had in mind, I'm > inclined to say we don't have to hypothesize a "different language" to make a > point here. The very same phrase in English can occasion innumerable > different notions. > > But I can imagine the writer responding by saying, "No, no -- I'm not > talking about notions. I'm saying we perceive a different mind-independent > world." But readers might then claim that "perceptions" are themselves mental > entities, notions; we never find pieces of the non-mental world in our minds, > etc. > > Or perhaps the writer means, for example, that the Inuit (eskimos) see snow > differently by virtue of the very fact that they have sixteen different > words for sixteen different kinds of snow. (Although, the last I heard, > scholars who know the Inuit language say it's baloney: they don't have sixteen > different words for different kinds of snow.) Oy vey. What a faulty sieve > language is!
