oneofshibumi

Epistemology Rhetoric = Knowledge and language are interconnected; separation is impossible.

Objectivism came into usage in 1850-1855. It meant a tendency to lay stress on the objective or external elements of cognition. Subjectivism came into usage in 1855-1860, five-years later. It meant the doctrine that all knowledge is limited to experiences by the self, and that transcendent knowledge is impossible. The term “transcendent” was used to differentiate subjectivism from anyone of the Christian Theology claims other “natural-scientists” might have had.

Most likely objectivism came into existence to differentiate itself from certain types of Christian thought, and subjectivism came to differentiate itself from other types of Christian thoughts. Theories in geology, physics, and chemistry consider themselves objective. Theories in language, history, and philosophy consider themselves subjective. Over time, the colloquial use of the word came to mean “emotional” or a “unique perspective.” I look at them as two ends of the same ruler. Nothing is completely subjective or objective, context is the key.


Why is language important part of knowledge?

After Benjamin Lee Whorf published his pioneering work, a minor industry grew up interpreting what it was he actually meant. One version of what he meant we can call radical Whorf. According to radical Whorf, you grow up in a language, and that language shapes the way you see the world, the way you think about it, the consciousness you have of it. The language you grow up with determines your view of things. This version of the Whorfian hypothesis goes by the name of linguistic determinism.

Language is a prison with no hope of parole. Translation and bilingualism are impossible. Even if you think you understand another world, you’re just kidding yourself, because the very consciousness you think you have is constructed only insofar as the chains of your native language allow it.

There are some problems with linguistic determinism. The first problem is, how did Whorf write articles about Hopi, in English, if it’s true? How can you talk about Hopi meanings in any other language at all?

The second problem is, if linguistic determinism were true, how would you ever test it? If you’re trapped by your language, any test you devise would be trapped by it as well.

The third problem is that people do translate things and bilinguals do exist. True, perfect translation and perfect bilingualism might be difficult; at least I think they are, and I’m not the only one. But lack of perfection doesn’t mean the task is impossible.

And finally, what about Whorf’s interpretations of his data, like the Hopi verb example I showed you? Don’t “expectation” and “memory” look a little bit like “future” and “past”? Aren’t there similarities that weave the differences together?

So, death to linguistic determinism. If it were true, we could never know it, and there’s plenty of evidence that it’s not true, at least not as I’ve simply stated it here.

The weaker version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is called linguistic relativity, the same term that Boas used. Language isn’t a prison; it’s a room you’re comfortable with, that you know how to move around in. You know that the dress shirts are next to the socks in the third drawer down. But familiarity doesn’t mean you can’t ever exist in a different room; it does mean it’ll take awhile to figure it out, because it’s not what you’re used to.

Linguistic relativity says that your language is the familiar room, the usual way of seeing the world and talking about it. Your language lays down habitual patterns of seeing and thinking and talking when you learn its grammar and vocabulary. But it doesn’t have to be a prison.

Culture is the parole form the Whorfian prison. Culture is exactly what happens when you realize that the room you grew up in is only one of several, that other languages lay down other habitual patterns of seeing and thinking and talking and acting.

It’s not impossible to move from one to another, but it’s not easy, either. Bilinguals exist, but they say there are times when it’s like living in two different worlds. Translators and interpreters can translate, but they complain about it a lot. In fact, one of their major complaints is that most monolinguals look at them as sort of advanced secretaries—“Here, put this into Czech for me, will you? I’ll be back after lunch.” What anyone who’s done translation knows is how difficult it is to render the view of one world in terms of another. As far as translators and interpreters are concerned, monolinguals are terminal number-one types.

Difference in language and culture are tied together. But the differences, as they say in the divorce laws, are not irreconcilable. The differences can be connected, but forging the connections requires a change in consciousness. What Whorf didn’t work out was, where are the points of connection? How can the connections be forged? True, he figured it out personally when he sat down with the Hopi Indian in New York and worked out verb conjugations. But he never made the experience part of his theory. Like Boas, he worked at a time when the researcher wasn’t allowed to be part of the research.

One of the saner tests of Whorf’s ideas was put together by Roger Brown, a social psychologist, and Eric Lenneberg, neurobiologist. After they’d read Whorf, they were fascinated with the argument for linguistic relativity. So they designed an experiment.
I’m not wild about experiments. Generally, experiments are a hermetically sealed world of the experimenters’ design. They lure people into it, assume they take it seriously, and ask them to do something ridiculous that they wouldn’t ordinarily do in their daily lives if you paid them. Well, maybe if you paid them.

This doesn’t strike me as the most direct approach to understanding the human situation. As someone, I can’t remember whom, once said, “The greatest source of information about the real world is, in fact, the real world.”

But the experiments Brown and Lenneberg did are a nice location to show how Whorf works. They show how Whorf works because the experimenters figured out a human similarity in terms of which differences in color perception from languaculture to languaculture could be compared. Brown and Lenneberg used a color spectrum, the rainbow squashed into a rectangle of color. The spectrum is divided into chips, so you can lift chips out and show them to people.

Then they invented two measurements that applied to each chip. One measurement they called codability. Codability means, how easy is it name that chip in some language? Say you lift out a solid red chip and show it to me. I tell you it’s called “red.” Then you lift out a strange-colored chip and show it to me. I say, well, it’s sort of the color of a sunset in Cozumel after it’s rained. My language offered “red” for the one chip, but I had to make up a phrase for the second. The first chip is more codable, easier to say, than the other.

The second measurement they invented was availability. Here’s one way they measured it. You show me a chip. I stare at it, wondering what’s the point. Then you take the chip away, toss it in a cookie sheet full of chips, shake them around, and ask me to pick out the chip you’d shown me earlier. How well do I do at this task? The better I do, said Brown and Lenneberg, the more available the concept. In other words, available concepts are right there, well oiled and warmed up and ready to use.

So, by now you’ve guessed the results. Brown and Lenneberg and that if Whorf is right, then the more codable the concept, the more available it should be. If a language packages the concept in a neat container that’s easy and frequently used, like “red,” that means the concept is more available to the speaker of that language than others that are more difficult to code.

As Whorf said, your language makes some things easier to do than others. And that’s the way it turned out. The hearts of the linguistic relativists soared like eagles.

That first experiment was performed with native speakers of American English. How would the test look in a different culture where codability was different? Lenneberg teamed up with anthropologist Jack Roberts to find out. They took the original experiment and transported it to the Zuni Indians in the American Southwest.

The Zuni have a single color term for the yellow and orange part of the spectrum. In other words, the yellow-orange part of the spectrum is less codable in Zuni than in English. So, the experimenters reasoned, if they did the same tests they’d done before, only this time on a group whose color vocabulary was less codable in a particular area, then the result should show that the color category was less available as well.

English speakers should do better in the yellow-orange area, not because they are any smarter, not because they can see differences that the Zuni can’t, but just because their language makes those concepts more available to them.

And by now it will come as no great shock to you to learn that that’ exactly what the researchers found. Even better, it turned out that the monolingual Zuni had the lowest yellow-orange availability scores, the bilingual Zuni-English came next, and the monolingual English-speaking Indians had scores just like those of non-Zuni native speakers of English.

Language lays down comfortable ruts of perception, and people by and large stay inside them. They know the ruts, function quickly and efficiently within them. It isn’t that they can’t go outside them, but when they do, it takes some time and energy. And we all know how most people react when you ask them for a little time and energy.

Language carries with it patterns of seeing, knowing, talking, and acting. Not patterns that imprison you, but patterns that mark the easier trails for thought and perception and action. Linguistic relativity, the weaker form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, soared skyward on the evidence.

Source: Agar, M. (1994). Language Shock: Understanding the Culture of Conversation. NY Quill

[ October 15, 2002: Message edited by: oneofshibumi ]</p>

Keith Russell

John said:
Hi Keith:
"I'm not sure what you mean by truly subjective. How, in your example above is it determined that "the train went by"? My suggestion is that in making that statement you assume a somwhat Cartesian view of the world with a fixed and absolute reference point against which all else can be judged erroneous."

No, John. But, there is a reference point for the train and the observer. The earth is the point of reference for objects moving on its surface. To say the train 'went by', is to say that, with the reference point of the earth, the train moved in one direction in relation to the earth, and the observer either moved along with the earth, or at least in a different direction from the train.

So, the observer and the train do pass each other.

Just because something is relative, doesn't mean its subjective.

Keith.

Primal

Are language and thought completely interdependent?

Our hominid ancestors were using stone tools and fire long before the birth of language. Neanderthal made use of spears without language. Would one venture to say these things do not think? Hardly.

The Linguistic Relativist Hypothesis has been on the retreat since the days of Whorf, even in Intro Psychology tests a quick refutation to the most radical versions of LRH are given and LRH has now taken the place in being content that language influences thought. Radical versions of how language influences thought have been tested and have failed the tests. Many weaker versions of LRH have not really been tested at all.

Refutations of the stronger versions of LRH have been conducted by Rosch(Heider) in 1972. Eleanor Rosch traveled to New Guinea to test the LRH hypothesis on a tribe called the Dani. Due to their unique enviroment the tribe had only two terms for color, Mola for bright/warm hues and mili for darker/colder hues. According to stronger versions of LRH the Dani would be incapable of distinguishing between more then two color types, as language was said to totally shape thought. However the Dani had no trouble distinuishing the differences between many novel colors and seemed keen on learning about focal colors-red,green and blue. This suggests that at least perception is not shaped by language. It is thus more likely that physiology shapes perception and not language. Similiar investigations have yielded similiar results. (Davies and Corbett 1997, Davies 1998)

This research of course has come under attack by radical linguistic relativists of course.

This makes sense from an evolutionary viewpoint, as it seems unlikely that different languages could displace millions of years of physiological adaptation.

But what about higher-level abstract functions? That for the most part has yet to be tested at all.

As has the idea of "perfect translation", whatever that is. One could hardly argue that there is even perfect communication within a language much less perfect translation between, but does that make philosophical systems incomeasurable?

For example, Buddhists had to translate the concept of Dharma in India into "tao" when they reached China. Does this not prove that comparing abstract viewpoints in philosophy is impossible? Many Xians also had to translate God as Tao.

Hardly, one can add that such philosophies can involve qualifications used to imply the word is used in a different sense, or bring in the word from another language with a brief description as people who speak English do with Tao. One can also add that people of different cultures can both do science effectively, which involves abstract reasoning and that scientists with different languages can communicate. I'm sure it was difficult for Voltair to learn about Newtonian mechanics but Voltair did end up learning about such mechanics and in fact was one of the Newton's leading advocates.

So might such translation be difficult? Of course. Impossible? Hardly.

But I suppose one will never know via anecdotes and stories. What one really needs is a scientific test, and this is wanting. Because of this I place Linguistic Relativism, in it's stronger forms, (as the idea that language influences thought is uncontroversial) in the same position I place Freudianism. And I would like to note that among cognitive scientists the stronger LRH positions are now fringe positions. Mainly due to the fact that when certain aspects are tested, they failed.

Most arguments for LRH in fact, are nothing more then pointing towards linguistic differences and apealing to anecdotes.

Of course there are strong LRH believers, just as there are still strong Freudians in psychology that believe everything Freud wrote was true. And just as there are still radical behaviorists that believe genes have little to no impact on personality.

This makes the Linguistic Relativist position more of a philosophical one, then a scientific one. And it will continue to be so until some serious empricial/scientific tests confirm the strong LRH position.

John Page

I never said all self-evident statements are wrong, which seems to be your implication. I am not rejecting all self-evident statements, merely asking why a statement that is (subjectively) self-evident to you needs to be accepted by me. This is like rejecting all scientific claims until they are proven to reasonable sceientific standards.

To say that something is subjective is not to invalidate it (in the same manner all truths claimed as self evident are not necessarily invalid as discussed above)! Your post above appears consitent with my claim that all observations are limited in scope and therefore contain an element of subjectivity. WHat do you mean by "ultimate standards" and how might we discern them?

LOL. You are dogmatically claiming that logic (although you don't sepcify which system of logic) plus self-evident truths are the opposite of dogmaticism. Somewhat of a contradiction, I think!

Cheers, John

John Page

?? I dont think I made any claim that an additional observer would not report the passing of the observer and train.

The observation is subjective, not the "thing". The "thing" can be defined in terms of its relation to other things, but such definitions of these relations are subjectively defined by us as observers of these relations.

To repeat from my earlier post, the more observations we have the less subjective is the definiton of relations between things.

Cheers, John

John Page

I agree, it seems self-evident that we have many languages that describe the same underlying concepts/thoughts. Example, all humans that I've ever met seem to experience and understand the concept "leaf" in pretty much the same way.

This being the case, the meaning of the words comes from our experiencing reality through our senses. Given common brain physiology we'll end up with the same understanding of the concept "leaf" whether the actual linguistic token for communicating the concept is in English, French, Russian, Urdu etc.

Cheers, John

Primal

But you are assuming that the self-evident is subjective, in a debate of constructivism vs foundationalism this is question begging. There is no self-evident for person X and self-evident for person Y, there is only the self-evident. Also, my claim is not scientific but philosophical so it is inappropriate for you to expect a scientific demonstration.


If we are going by a proper definition of subjective it is.


Not really. One, because I reject your definition of subjective as ambiguous. Two, because I don't believe all knowledge comes down to observations.


Again please read my first post on this topic. By ultimate standards I mean the final proof in a chain of reasoning.


Well so if I disagree with the charge that I'm dogmatic, I am being dogmatic and hence contradictory? Nothing like assuming what one is trying to prove and invoking contradiction upon mere disagreement.

Tell me how is my claim dogmatic?

And if anything assuming another's position in spite of objection is in fact very dogmatic. As is a position which does not allow for self-correction, like constructivism. The difference is then that I admit my axioms are the final arbiter and are not open to confirmation or disconfirmation from outside standards whereas you do not. Also I do need to specify which system of logic because I think that there is one overall basic system of logic.

Lastly is it more dogmatic to go by proofs via self-evident standards or blindly attack opponents arguments via poisoning the well? If anything it is the dogmatic person that invokes a sneer and an objective person that instead goes by logic.

John Page

In an earlier post, you stated "In fact a system based on logic and the self-evident is the opposite of dogmatic...."

This is dogma, def. an arrogant declaration of opinion. It would be similarly arrogant of me to declare that what is self-evident to me must therefore be the ultimate truth.

How else, then, to we acquire knowledge?

... and against what standards do we reckon that proof? How do we determine that our premises and assumptions are valid? Surely not because they're self-evident...

On a final note, I have a suspicion that one of the reasons we're not seeing eye to eye on the subjective nature of our experience of the world is purely because you "see it differently" - of course this is a consequence of the subjective nature of our experience.

Cheers, John

Primal

Reason.



John this is all covered in my first post on this topic that you for some reason either refuse to read or do not understand.

Basically you can't verify self-evident truths via certain standards, why? Because they are the end point to a line of reasoning.

It's like this John: Whenever you make an argument that requires proof, that "proof" must be verfied via a given standard, this "standard" must itself be verified and so on. After a while you either get to an end point, go on forever or go in circles. I have chosen the end point with self-evident truth being the bottom line in a series of verification. That is why I cannot verify the self-evident externally but I see the verification as being internal. i.e. it is precisely because they are self-evident. It is I think, dogmatic and arrogant of you to be rejecting my verification so hastily.

Nope it's because we disagree with eachother's definitions, this has nothing to do with sight John. Nor does this make the issue subjective as I have argued for my definitions whereas you have yet to.

In any case John you do seem to adhere to certain axioms you see as self-evident mainly sense experience and the provisional nature of each statement. The difference between me and you is that I aknowledge this whereas you do not.

John you also seem to be promoting a sort of positivism, which is pretty dead in philosophy mainly because it couldn't verify itself.

According to positivists and other radical empricists, one can only claim to know something if one could equate or reduce such a claim to sense experience. This is known as the principle of verification, yet it remains to be asked; how can the principle of verification itself be verified? What exact sense experience establishes the claim that "all knowledge is sense experience"? None really, meaning the claim above, according to the empricist model cannot be taken as knowledge, in which case empiricism falls apart.

John Page

Indeed, a very good question that remains unanswered by foundationalism but which is understandable in constructivism through intersubjective experience.

Primal, if reason is a process, what then provides reason with the data upon which it feeds?

Cheers, John