Greetings Economists, On Apr 20, 2007, at 8:09 AM, Jim Devine wrote:
that one can "think better" if one instead one belongs to a religious (etc.) minority group (so that one has to try to see the world using two different Weltanschaungen) or has a physical or mental handicap (where the "thinking better" happens outside of those areas that are handicapped). Being a fish out of water pushes one to "think better."
Doyle; Well in the sense you are using 'think better' there is a big question about 'better'. The assumption behind every day language jabber is language is all of conscious thinking. What you touch upon by questioning better is a cultural confusion about what thinking is. I.e. can consciousness be totally expressed in words alone. All thought is not words. In function words are a pretty restricted domain of thinking compared to action. Doing physical work gets things done, but try using words to do the work. Just describing what you do is gonna be very hard compared to the ease of doing it. So the thinking behind action is mostly not language. Within the narrow limits of my observation of the query I take the question to be about how experience versus ignorance helps people to better think about the tool of language. But thinking is probably mostly not language. There is a chauvinism about thinking being language that is highlighted in your subsequent comment. That taken into account knowing two languages is an aid to better understanding the work process of language in the community. Doyle
