• Members of the previous forum can retrieve their temporary password here, (login and check your PM).

Implication of language on perception of reality?

Traged

Esteemed member
What the fuck...


Can you guys watch this, and have a think?

Implication would be, that us having a way to name something drastically changes our ability to interact with a world. When it can impact vision, it therefore can impact other types of senses - hearing for sure (when you think about modern music and microtonality). There might be possibility for it affecting touch? - I am not sure about that. But for sure there might be effects on thinking as well.

I see just an opening for a rabbit hole...

Lets jump!

<3
 
yeah,

When you look into modern tuning, equal temperament -> what pianos use, its not perfect, like Pythagorean tuning sounded better except wolf interval. Now we are used to equal temperament and other tuning might sound to you "not right" or "wrong"... you have been conditioned for what feels right to you (Beethoven wrote music but his piano was tuned bit differently).

In that video they talk about the test with African tribe that doesn't have a word for blue color. Which impacted their ability to find different dot in the group of dots - they were faster to find lighter green dot in the group of green dots, while slower to find blue dot in the group of green dots. While people who do have a word for blue - like you and me will have it other way around.

Hardware is the same, same eyes, same brains. Only difference is the word.

So basically that would mean not having a name for something, will change the way you interact with a thing. We could even connect this to psychedelic experiences. If you are only ever knew some kind of religion, only thing you might get out of it is that you personally spoke to god. If you would get Buddhist on them, they would have different idea based on their religion- probably. Conclusions would be grafted from ideas about the world, or words they knew.

But apparently the "you need a name for it to make sense of it" permeates into to physical world and our interactions. Maybe even in scary way.

Not only this implies, or show again importance of words(and thoughts, can we even think without words properly?). But also brings up questions like, how much is center of speech in our brain responsible for - even indirectly? Is there connection between early consumption of mushrooms by proto humans causing development of speech center and "this"?

In this case, word blue, changes the way they interact with a world, while word blue roughly describes border of color spectrum. If you would describe musical tones properly to a kid, would he acquire great "musical hearing" easily?

Can we affect people, ourselves and world with this knowledge?

Do you see where I am going?

Words describe borders in some cases, how we see them changes how we interact and see them. It doesn't matter if its color, sound or complex ideas (experience). Now is this going even more deep? Can it affect other things?

Is this understandable?

<3
 
Does seem odd that they don't have a name for the colour of the sky, but I guess pattern recognition is that much easier when you have very little experience of something before, like looking for a specific symbol in another alphabet to your own, but that's kind of why I find the lack of word for the colour of the sky so weird.
Interesting thought about musical capabilities. I'm not so sure about 'changing' the world due to language, as opposed to changing your perception, but then, what else actually is there?
 
Does seem odd that they don't have a name for the colour of the sky
yeah that was a point why I watched that video, then I was screwed...

Guess the point is in declaring borders, between colors and between tones. Than naming the portions created.

Looks like its similar with ideas, or when manipulating masses - enemies.

This is the proverbial nut I will be hitting with my head for some time I guess... :rolleyes:

<3
 
Regarding the study of what language is, the evolution of identity and language for children is fascinating. Infant communication with the mother is so cool.

There will be a lot to say about language, from various disciplines of our culture, but if you really wish to see it for what it is, observe it from silence, or a meta-linguistic consciousness. Using language to understand language doesn’t work because being within it, you cannot gain perspective to see it fully
 
There will be a lot to say about language, from various disciplines of our culture, but if you really wish to see it for what it is, observe it from silence, or a meta-linguistic consciousness. Using language to understand language doesn’t work because being within it, you cannot gain perspective to see it fully
Similar to Hodfstsder's description of the undefeatability of Godel incompleteness

One love
 
Last edited:
Elsewhere, in a parallel universe, I've described an ayahuasca experience where an invasion of transgalactic linguistic decapods had to be staved off by my shutting down all linguistic thought. That made for a challenging lesson in meditation, learning telepathic gestalt communication under threat of being devoured by giant space woodlice.

And now I've gone and put words to it :ROFLMAO:

Nonlinguistic thought is entirely possible, it's just not terribly easy to express ideas about it over the internet without the use of words, unless one were a tremendously talented artist, perhaps.

Now try describing an unusual odour ;)
 
Ah this strongly aligns with my constructionist views, and makes me think that you would be interested in the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis.

Curious about what you mean by constructionist views, @Varallo 🧐

Plowing through a Judith Butler essay at the moment.
In it, they highlight the importance of language in constructing our very own body:

"We do tend to describe language as actively producing or crafting a body every time we use, implicitly or explicitly, the language of discursive construction."

Later on:

"There is, of course, something quite scandalous involved in the strong version of construction that is sometimes at work when, for instance, the doctrine of construction implies that the body is not only made by language, but made of language or that the body is somehow reducible to the linguistic coordinates by which it is identified and identifiable, as if there is no nonlinguistic stuff at issue."
 
Curious about what you mean by constructionist views, @Varallo 🧐

Plowing through a Judith Butler essay at the moment.
In it, they highlight the importance of language in constructing our very own body:



Later on:
As in that the concept of the YouTube video closely aligns with my constructivist view of the world or reality in that matter. I think that much of what we understand as “reality” is not an objective, truth but rather something created, and maintained through human interaction, language, and shared cultural practices. When talking about
epistemologies it’s most of the time presented as an alternative or even opposite of a positivist view.

You should read up on the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis and what is said about it, it’s exactly what the video is about and probably based off.
 
I think language absolutely affects reality. Probably more than most are willing to admit. I find you can glean a lot about what people's perceptions of the world are, for example people who perceive themselves to be a victim of life will often talk of things happening or being done to them. I know that's a pretty mundane example but I experienced it just this morning listening to someone speak lol so it's fresh in my mind.

Glad to have a term for it now @Varallo, I don't think anyone who has had psychedelics could view our perception of reality as looking out through glass windows as if we're in a submarine as representative of our experience of reality. Our realities are highly constructed, filtered etc. This starts to bump into Goethe's "scientific" (though I would be more inclined to say phenomenological) discourse.
 
think that much of what we understand as “reality” is not an objective, truth but rather something created, and maintained through human interaction, language, and shared cultural practices. When talking about
epistemologies it’s most of the time presented as an alternative or even opposite of a positivist view.
Which is funny, because we as creatures seem to often mistake this.

I think there's a difference between language affecting  reality and language affecting the phenomenology of what may be reality.

One love
 
@Voidmatrix I more meant that despite being aware of phenomenology and even mentioned it in my post I start my post with "language absolutely affects reality" which is exactly the mistake you're talking about, our realities would have been more accurate. I mean it is what I meant in a sense but I just found it funny.
 
‘Reality’ … Y’all begging me to throw in some Lacanian psychoanalysis!

Jacques Lacan talks about the interplay between the Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real.

The Symbolic register is the domain of language and cultural structures, while the Imaginary is associated with the ego and its illusions. The Real, as the unrepresentable, challenges the coherence of these domains, leading to experiences of breakdown and inconsistency.

Slavoj Žižek, for instance, interprets the Real as a site of ontological catastrophe, a paradoxical metaphysical space that disrupts the coherence of the Symbolic and Imaginary registers. He argues that the Real is both dependent on and opposed to the Symbolic and Imaginary, creating a complex interplay that defines human experience.

In short: the Real may be unrepresentable.

Just like @Transform ’s odour 🤭
 
Back
Top Bottom