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Words Affect Our Reality - On The Right
The Whorf hypothesis claims that one's native language influences perception and thought. Researchers at UC-Berkeley and U-Chicago reasoned that, since language is predominantly processed in the left hemisphere of the brain, any effect on perception should have an effect predominantly on the right visual field, which is also processed on the left. After comparing reaction times for hues of blue-green -- colors with distinct names in one language but not another -- they concluded, in a just-published paper, that the Whorf hypothesis holds for the right visual field, but not the left.
What if one is Bi-Lingual natively?
I remember a similar study where a culture with only four words for colors could still distinguish different 'English' colors. It doesn't seem too surprising that it may take them a little longer.
What if that mime really is trapped in a box?
This is a really outstanding result and leads to some interesting new territory. It would seem that there may well be two (or more?) discrete cognitive processes mediating reality for mind. Another blow to the idea of a comprehensive, unitary consciousness and the corresponding myth of a radical alterity labelled unconscious.
illegitimii non ingravare
I wonder if this is like native asians and the letters 'r' and 'l'-- if you don't learn the difference when you are young then your brain will have problems thinking that way.
If so, it would mean that it's not the language that causes you to think differently, but a seperate skill that you also use to speak the language. In this case of the Tarahumara speakers, it's distinquishing green and blue. They never needed to do so, so now they have problems when tested for it.
The researchers found that participants responded more quickly when the color of the odd-man-out had a different name than the color of the other squares -- as if the linguistic difference had heightened the perceptual difference -- but this only occurred if the odd-man-out was in the right half of the visual field, and not when it was in the left half. This was the predicted pattern.
The conclusions seem sound. The experiment even proved its aim that only the left half of the brain shows a difference. As the article mentions, the linguistic distinction seems to heighten the left hemisphere's ability to distinguish the actual color distinction. But does this show a fundamental difference in thought processes, or simply a type of learned response.
For example, imagine an experiment whereby you walk down the street wearing a T-shirt with a CCCP logo on it. Most people born after say, 1980 might not even bat an eyelid. Someone who grew up amid the 50's red scare, practicing taking shelter under their school desk, might suddenly find their eye transfixed on the logo, their heart rate increasing, and a sudden urge to duck beneath the nearest school desk.
So does something similar occur when you've been taught your whole life that blue and green are different colors, verses say, being told that green was just a kind of yellowy blue?
May the Maths Be with you!
I believe this is somewhat of a simplification. It may be applicable in terms of auditory perception and processing, but as everyone knows, language is much more than the sum of individual words.
Neurolinguistic events are examples of associative cascade events. This is illustrated by the classic example: "Don't think of an elephant." Immediately after reading and comprehending the linguistic elements of the sentence, each and every reader of this post made the applicable associative connections resulting in the contemplation (even if minor and short-lived) of one of our long-nosed pachyderm friends. Even if it was understood that the instruction was not to make the association, by the time this level of awareness was achieved, the cascade was already in progress and unstoppable.
The context of such associative cascades (especially more sophisticated varieties) is largely cultural; however the portions of the brain most likely to respond is based on each association in the chain and its relative contextual weight, rather than the phonetics of the original sound itself.
Lyrical forms of linguistics, such as poetry and song, are particularly powerful because they offer a way to rapidly trigger abstract associations not related to logic, speech or visual images.
There's no way that Sapir Whorf can be true. If it were, that means that, just off the top of my head, we couldn't lie, entertain theoretical possibilities, hear two sides of the same event, understand that we were misinformed earlier but have correct information now, tell a fictional story, etc.
Stephen Pinker does a good job of debunking Sapir Whorf in _The Language Instinct_. The classic examples of the number of Eskimo words for snow is actually not true -- Inuit language has a lot of suffixes, but there are only a few different root words for snow. English has about as many root words for snow.
The other example was factory workers or something who mistakenly disposed of cigarette butts in 'empty' barrels that were actually full of flammable fumes. Well, the workers weren't fooled by language; there were fooled by invisible fumes. An empty barrel looks exactly like one full of fumes.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
I don't find it surprising that our language constructs limit or expand our perceptions of reality. What worries me though is how little language an average American knows. Having worked many jobs over the years, I have been repeatedly struck by how limited in linguistical skills and vocabulary most people are. The average English speaking American seems to use the same words over and over to mean different things.
I wonder how many discoveries we have missed because our language constrains us away from thinking about certain things. If we had more words and thus more distinctions for fundamental ideas and objects, we would very likely have greater understanding and regard for those things. I am reminded of how the Greek language differentiated between several types of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_words_for_love love and whereas the English language does not. Because of the linguistic distinctions, the Greeks appeared to have a greater understanding of the concept of love than we do in America. Mix this limitation of the English language with the generally minuscule vocabulary of individuals and it isn't surprising that we Americans are so simple minded.
"It is easy problem to learn the things we do not know. The harder problem is trying know things that we do not know that we do not know."
Personally, I wonder if I am limited by the English language to thoughts I wish to express. Maybe my mind is a computer, the neurons the cpu, my memories is the hard drive storage, but my language is the OS.
However, what if I have Qbasic for DOS for my speaking language? No matter how powerful my brain is, I can't use this to create say "Doom 4" though expression for the mind. I'd need a specialized C++ compiler that optimized neurons in such a pattern to acheive this.
What if that language doesn't exist yet? Is it possible that my brain could have thoughts and emotions, but can't because I can't use language to express them.
On the bright side, English is a quickly mutating bastard language which seems fairly evolvable but sometimes I wonder if I should learn Japanese, Russian, or German and then end up with a new outlook on life.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Why settle for mundane utility languages? Learn Navajo or Swahili or Inuit, then design a programming language based on the linguistic concepts and world view you've now acquired. A Navajo-based computing language would be interesting, it would perhaps specialize in calculating only that which is actually worth calculating. Of course such a language would completely eliminiate Slashdot from existence.
I find this interesting, because at the age of four, I was legally blind in my right eye. There was no damage, the eye was just dramaticly lazy, and incredibly far sighted. The correction was so strong that without my glasses I could barely see a foot square letter 10 feet away. My left eye, at the time was perfectly normal.
:)
Years of patching have brought my right eye very close to normal. With time my left has drifted into near sightedness, leaving me nearsighted in my left eye and farsighted in my right.
However even now my vision is almost exclusively left eyed. My perceived field of vision is biased towards my left, making me turn my head slightly to my right to "face" someone. The information from my right eye is there, it just feels a lot like peripheral vision. I read exclusively with my left eye. My brain actually has data from both eyes, but has difficulty co-ordinating them. Sometimes it uses the double vision to judge distance, but other times, my brain seems pretty good at shutting down the right-eye image when I'm reading. This is all done subconciously, I don't realize I'm doing it a lot of the time.
I'm still trying to figure out exactly what this would mean related to this article. That I'm unbiased by language? That I'm a wishy washy pinko liberal? I'd like to think that this means my perception of the world is unbiased. More than likely all of these explanations are absolute junk.
(See, I can't make up my mind.
Side note: Of course with eye problems like this we've watched very carefully for eye problems in our own children. Our oldest's eyes are fine, but my youngest daughter is very farsighted (5.5/6 diopters). People, Watch for and catch eye problems with your own kids BEFORE they turn four. Early corrective measures (potentially surgery, don't be afraid of it) can have a dramtic effect on proper vision into adulthood.