[robgski]

Though it is important that one has the proper words in sufficient quantity to comprehend and analyze one's own circumstance, there is also importance to having proper words in sufficient quantity to share thoughts and ideas between each other.
Fahrenheit 451 has a great passage to the effect of the burning of books taking place as a thought that must occur before the literal burning takes place.

[arnold]

That is, having words for turquoise and azure helps us perceive the difference between them.

You don't think that first the differences were noted, and then words were created as a reference to these differences?

[Des]

You don't think that first the differences were noted, and then words were created as a reference to these differences?

Perhaps my reference to azure and turquoise was a bad example. The point of the studies I mentioned remains. It seems pretty well established in the science that language influences thought, at least to some extent.

[savoche]

To take a simple example, there are studies that show that the more names there are for colours in a particular society, the more people are able to recognize different colours and shades of colours. In that example, the reality doesn't change, but our perception of it is affected by language. That is, having words for turquoise and azure helps us perceive the difference between them.

Interesting topic. I believe the ancient Greeks described the sky as being "wine coloured".

From Wikipedia:

The ancient Greeks classified colours by whether they were light or dark, rather than by their hue. The Greek word for dark blue, kyaneos, could also mean dark green, violet, black or brown. The ancient Greek word for a light blue, glaukos, also could mean light green, grey, or yellow.[34] The Greeks imported indigo dye from India, calling it indikon. They used Egyptian blue in the wall paintings of Knossos, in Crete, (2100 BC). It was not one of the four primary colours for Greek painting described by Pliny the Elder (red, yellow, black, and white), but nonetheless it was used as a background colour behind the friezes on Greek temples and to colour the beards of Greek statues.

Does that mean that they percieved colours differently from what we do? These days, at least in western cultures, I think most people think of colours primarily as hues, not so much in terms of luminence. Does language reflect our perception, or is it the other way around? Looking at the list of publications supporting either a "universalist" or a "relativist" view I have a feeling that there is no definite answer!

[savoche]

The most important new word in years: clickbait

Where's the link?

Here, in The Matrix, "existence" means what we perceive it to be. For example, I know this perfectly cooked, juicy, delicious steak doesn't really "exist"...

All we really have is the present moment and the opportunity to be alive and aware in this moment. This is eternity, you're in it, and in heaven or hell now, in this moment. Existential questions don't really matter, your world is what you perceive it to be.

[Des]

Does that mean that they percieved colours differently from what we do? These days, at least in western cultures, I think most people think of colours primarily as hues, not so much in terms of luminence. Does language reflect our perception, or is it the other way around?

Here is Stanford professor Lera Boroditsky on colour perception:
"To test whether differences in color language lead to differences in color perception, we compared Russian and English speakers' ability to discriminate shades of blue. In Russian there is no single word that covers all the colors that English speakers call "blue." Russian makes an obligatory distinction between light blue (goluboy) and dark blue (siniy). Does this distinction mean that siniy blues look more different from goluboy blues to Russian speakers? Indeed, the data say yes. Russian speakers are quicker to distinguish two shades of blue that are called by the different names in Russian (i.e., one being siniy and the other being goluboy) than if the two fall into the same category. For English speakers, all these shades are still designated by the same word, "blue," and there are no comparable differences in reaction time.
Further, the Russian advantage disappears when subjects are asked to perform a verbal interference task (reciting a string of digits) while making color judgments but not when they're asked to perform an equally difficult spatial interference task (keeping a novel visual pattern in memory). The disappearance of the advantage when performing a verbal task shows that language is normally involved in even surprisingly basic perceptual judgments — and that it is language per se that creates this difference in perception between Russian and English speakers.
When Russian speakers are blocked from their normal access to language by a verbal interference task, the differences between Russian and English speakers disappear."
(HOW DOES OUR LANGUAGE SHAPE THE WAY WE THINK? | Edge.org)

This is not saying that Russian speakers see blue differently, just that language primes them to perceive differences in shades of blue more quickly.

It seems unlikely that the ancient Greeks actually thought that a cloudless sky was the same colour as red wine (unless there was some common gene for colour-blindness that affected this perception). If the Greeks used "kyaneos" to mean dark blue, dark green, violet, black or brown, it doesn't mean that they couldn't perceive the differences in hue; it seems more likely that the differences were less important to them than the differences between light and dark colours.

Looking at the list of publications supporting either a "universalist" or a "relativist" view I have a feeling that there is no definite answer!

I suspect, as with a lot of debates in the social sciences, that the answer probably lies somewhere in the middle. The extreme relativist position, propounded by Whorf, now seems to be discredited, but there is clear evidence that language does affect perception at least to some degree.

---

Last edited by Des; 02-12-2020 at 03:58 PM.

[arnold]

"Man’s senses are his only direct cognitive contact with reality and, therefore, his only source of information. Without sensory evidence, there can be no concepts; without concepts, there can be no language; without language, there can be no knowledge and no science."
What this quote is stressing is that first we have perceptions and from these we form abstract concepts. Concepts are labeled by words which are defined to clarify the concept they stand for. Perceptions of subtle differences in colours can be abstracted to form a concept. If I say "green" I am conveying a concept to others. Clearly the more subtle differences are conceptualized and have a word attached to them, the greater our scope of language and the ability to describe. Perception leads to words, not the other way around.

[robgski]

Words can enhance perception, anyone who has seen a child develop, especially if they have ever taught achild a new word, knows this firsthand. Even as an adult, learning a new, more specific word, affects how we perceive another similar thing. Though we photographers deal in visual images, we have words to describe a subject, and knowing those words, we seek to capture a subject in a way that conveys those words.
Is a leaf just a green plane, or is it ovoid, symetrical, veined, translucent?
Is a persons face aged, or rugged?

[photoptimist]

"Man’s senses are his only direct cognitive contact with reality and, therefore, his only source of information. Without sensory evidence, there can be no concepts; without concepts, there can be no language; without language, there can be no knowledge and no science."
What this quote is stressing is that first we have perceptions and from these we form abstract concepts. Concepts are labeled by words which are defined to clarify the concept they stand for. Perceptions of subtle differences in colours can be abstracted to form a concept. If I say "green" I am conveying a concept to others. Clearly the more subtle differences are conceptualized and have a word attached to them, the greater our scope of language and the ability to describe. Perception leads to words, not the other way around.

Quite true.

And yet biological and cognitive science prove the limitations of direct perceptions because both language and genetics modulate people's diverse perception of things such as color. My English "green" may be different from someone else's French "vert" and different from someone else who has different genes for their opsin pigments.

Science fixes this by creating sensors that use replicable physical systems to "perceive" color in a uniform way. Anyone can make one of the devices, point it at a "green" object and get the identical reading.

[arnold]

robgski
Words represent abstract concepts, (like big or near or hot or soft or slippery). When a child learns a new word, he has integrated a concept. This advances his thinking power and delights him. He picks up a pillow and says 'soft'. His perception remains the same as before, but now he can isolate (abstract) a property from the rest of the pillow. It is not his perception that improves but his conception and understanding.

A word represents a concept and if he grasps a concept of "tree" his mind embraces every tree, from the past, present and future. He is literally dealing with untold numbers with the tree concept.

Notice that complex concepts like justice or marriage are built on simpler concepts and take time for a young person to grasp.

Anyway I doubt folks on this forum are much interested in Epistemology so will leave it at that.

---------- Post added 13-02-20 at 15:45 ----------

Science fixes this by creating sensors that use replicable physical systems to "perceive" color in a uniform way. Anyone can make one of the devices, point it at a "green" object and get the identical reading.

True, our senses alone may lead us to wrong assumptions. Are our senses lying when you insert a straight stick and see it bend in the water, or are you fooled by a mirage a mirage? If the stick looked straight you would then know there were visual problems. Is a colorblind person deluded by his senses? If one looks at his eyes, is it not possible to predict what he will see because his eyes do indeed report what they see. In the end one has to be aware of the full context that the senses are operating in.

...
True, our senses alone may lead us to wrong assumptions. ... Is a colorblind person deluded by his senses? If one looks at his eyes, is it not possible to predict what he will see because his eyes do indeed report what they see. In the end one has to be aware of the full context that the senses are operating in.

No, not deluded at all. My eyes report the reality of true color, as it exists in my world. I know, for example, that this mythical thing people keep referring to as "red" is merely some imaginary construct of their "big brain" that needs to express some emotional drive for balance in the universe. (I don't see it, so it doesn't exist. Ultimately a theological question - just ask Richard Dawkins.) It's a good question whether one could determine a degree of color-blindness (which I refer to as "wolf-vision", since I'm not fooled by color-based camouflage and can see in what other people think is total cave-darkness.) by an examination of the retina. As far as I know, no one has ever tried to figure out the physiological manifestation of that genetic characteristic. My personal hypothesis is that there are fewer color photoreceptors per unit of retinal surface, with a concomitant increase in "pixel pitch" for luminance, since the black/white photoreceptors are relatively tiny by comparison.

And, by the way, there's also the famous example of Inuit which has no word for "white", but fifty-two specific kinds of shades/tints that, in English, would be "white".

One more thing: it's my understanding that the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis only said that people can't normally think of things for which they have no words. I don't really buy it, myself, since I often imagine as many as six impossible things before breakfast! (as does the Red Queen).

[photoptimist]

robgski
Words represent abstract concepts, (like big or near or hot or soft or slippery). When a child learns a new word, he has integrated a concept. This advances his thinking power and delights him. He picks up a pillow and says 'soft'. His perception remains the same as before, but now he can isolate (abstract) a property from the rest of the pillow. It is not his perception that improves but his conception and understanding.

A word represents a concept and if he grasps a concept of "tree" his mind embraces every tree, from the past, present and future. He is literally dealing with untold numbers with the tree concept.

Notice that complex concepts like justice or marriage are built on simpler concepts and take time for a young person to grasp.

Anyway I doubt folks on this forum are much interested in Epistemology so will leave it at that.

---------- Post added 13-02-20 at 15:45 ----------



True, our senses alone may lead us to wrong assumptions. Are our senses lying when you insert a straight stick and see it bend in the water, or are you fooled by a mirage a mirage? If the stick looked straight you would then know there were visual problems. Is a colorblind person deluded by his senses? If one looks at his eyes, is it not possible to predict what he will see because his eyes do indeed report what they see. In the end one has to be aware of the full context that the senses are operating in.

It may be true that words represent concepts but do we all have the same concept with any given word?

A child might learn the word "tree" but then misapply it. The child might fail to recognize a sprouting acorn as an oak tree -- a false negative. Or the child might falsely say that a banana plant is a tree -- a false positive. Moreover, many of the adults around the child might make the same mistakes which then reinforces the child's erroneous concept of a tree. But if a social group shares the same "erroneous" concept of a given word, then maybe that's not problem because the principle purpose of words is communicate so mutual agreement suffices. It may not be until misconceptions affect actions that problems might arise such as trying to cut down banana plants for timber or firewood or killing all the oak sprouts in the forest on the assumption they are non-tree weeds.

It's worth noting that "there is no universally agreed upon definition of 'tree' even in a strictly botanical sense. While it is initially a question of grouping plants with similar characteristics, it is ultimately a function of subjective criteria that change from context to context." (https://web.archive.org/web/20140420004648/http://www.as.miami.edu/qr/arbore...is_a_tree.html) The physical world is like that -- it laughs at humanity's quest to create neat little concepts.

The only realms of human thought that can have precise definitions are the artificial realms of math and logic where axioms can define a set of discrete symbols and operations. As soon as one delves into the real world, things become messy, boundaries become fuzzy, and even the simplest math concepts are revealed to be only approximations. (For example true circles only exist in math, not in the physical world because a host of microscopic and macroscopic effects make pi as the ratio between diameter and circumference an approximation.)

[c.a.m]

Anyway I doubt folks on this forum are much interested in Epistemology so will leave it at that.

Actually, I'm finding this branch of discussion quite interesting. As an engineer/scientist having had a career in research and development, I'll admit that this is the first time that I've heard of the word "epistemology" (had to think for a moment how to spell it there).

It may be true that words represent concepts but do we all have the same concept with any given word?

You give several examples of differing interpretations. I would guess that this variation in concept applies especially to words such as "soft," which can have quite a broad range of meanings to different people. For example, when we refer to the degree of sharpness in an image -- the corners are "soft" -- a lack of a definitive specification for "soft" means that we will interpret the concept in various ways. Some will think "that's actually pretty sharp" while others might conclude the lens is terrible.

(For example true circles only exist in math, not in the physical world because a host of microscopic and macroscopic effects make pi as the ratio between diameter and circumference an approximation.)

I would agree. On the other hand, approximations of circles are often satisfactory in the real physical world. Whether one needs to know pi to 5 or 15 decimal places is a matter of its application, I suppose.


I think I'm following the conversation.

- Craig

[arnold]

It may be true that words represent concepts but do we all have the same concept with any given word?

A child might learn the word "tree" but then misapply it. The child might fail to recognize a sprouting acorn as an oak tree -- a false negative. Or the child might falsely say that a banana plant is a tree -- a false positive. Moreover, many of the adults around the child might make the same mistakes which then reinforces the child's erroneous concept of a tree. But if a social group shares the same "erroneous" concept of a given word, then maybe that's not problem because the principle purpose of words is communicate so mutual agreement suffices. It may not be until misconceptions affect actions that problems might arise such as trying to cut down banana plants for timber or firewood or killing all the oak sprouts in the forest on the assumption they are non-tree weeds.

It's worth noting that "there is no universally agreed upon definition of 'tree' even in a strictly botanical sense. While it is initially a question of grouping plants with similar characteristics, it is ultimately a function of subjective criteria that change from context to context." (University of Miami | College of Arts & Sciences | John C. Gifford Arboretum | Smartphone Tour | What is a tree?) The physical world is like that -- it laughs at humanity's quest to create neat little concepts.

The only realms of human thought that can have precise definitions are the artificial realms of math and logic where axioms can define a set of discrete symbols and operations. As soon as one delves into the real world, things become messy, boundaries become fuzzy, and even the simplest math concepts are revealed to be only approximations. (For example true circles only exist in math, not in the physical world because a host of microscopic and macroscopic effects make pi as the ratio between diameter and circumference an approximation.)

Do we all have the same concept for a given word? Good question. This is where definitions come in and reading up on this, I found this unique perspective.
Quote:
It is often said that definitions state the meaning of words. This is true, but it is not exact. A word is merely a visual-auditory symbol used to represent a concept; a word has no meaning other than that of the concept it symbolizes, and the meaning of a concept consists of its units. It is not words, but concepts that man defines—by specifying their referents.

The purpose of a definition is to distinguish a concept from all other concepts and thus to keep its units differentiated from all other existents." Unquote

Definitions are absolute only in a given context, not future contexts that may include facts yet unknown. Take the definition of "man" (Man is the rational animal.) Certainly in the current context of our knowledge, the power of reason (Reason integrates man’s perceptions by means of forming abstractions or conceptions) is the fundamental distinguishing characteristic compared to other animals. Assume an alien from space arrives and happens to be an unusual animal with the ability to reason. In that case, our definition would not hold and some other distinguishing characteristic would need to be found.

The reason mathematical definitions hold all the time is because they exist in a frozen context. Euclid geometry exists in its own world, not the world of curved space where the shortest distance followed by a lightbeam may not be a straight line.

---------- Post added 14-02-20 at 07:51 ----------

No, not deluded at all. My eyes report the reality of true color, as it exists in my world. I know, for example, that this mythical thing people keep referring to as "red" is merely some imaginary construct of their "big brain" that needs to express some emotional drive for balance in the universe. (I don't see it, so it doesn't exist. Ultimately a theological question - just ask Richard Dawkins.) It's a good question whether one could determine a degree of color-blindness (which I refer to as "wolf-vision", since I'm not fooled by color-based camouflage and can see in what other people think is total cave-darkness.) by an examination of the retina. As far as I know, no one has ever tried to figure out the physiological manifestation of that genetic characteristic. My personal hypothesis is that there are fewer color photoreceptors per unit of retinal surface, with a concomitant increase in "pixel pitch" for luminance, since the black/white photoreceptors are relatively tiny by comparison.

And, by the way, there's also the famous example of Inuit which has no word for "white", but fifty-two specific kinds of shades/tints that, in English, would be "white".

One more thing: it's my understanding that the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis only said that people can't normally think of things for which they have no words. I don't really buy it, myself, since I often imagine as many as six impossible things before breakfast! (as does the Red Queen).

Quote: One more thing: it's my understanding that the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis only said that people can't normally think of things for which they have no words. I don't really buy it, myself, since I often imagine as many as six impossible things before breakfast! (as does the Red Queen).

One cannot think if one doesn't use concepts and words represent concepts. Certainly we can have fanciful concepts, but note they will have their roots in basic perceptions. Take the Unicorn. It is imagined from previous perceptions of horses and horns. Pegasus the flying horse is imagined from similar perceptions of flight and a horse. How is it even possible to think of things when there is no concept (word) of them?
The six impossible things you imagine before breakfast would involve words describing them,