”Because we don't experience reality through language but direct sensory perception”

That statement is patently false. We know that language influences our senses to a degree where we are unable to perceive things if our language doesn’t have a word for it, and will see different things as being equal if our language uses the same word for both.

There are examples of tribal humans not being able to perceive a green square among blue squares, because their language does not have a word for the green color.

Similarly, some use the same word for blue and white, and are unable to perceive them as different colors.

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Tor3 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

"There are examples of tribal humans not being able to perceive a green square among blue squares, because their language does not have a word for the green color.

Similarly, some use the same word for blue and white, and are unable to perceive them as different colors."

Both of the above is false. There are a ton of different colors that I happen to call "red", that does not mean that I can't perceive them as different. That I don't call them "different colors" is completely irrelevant. And unable to perceive blue and white as different colors? (Maybe that was a joke?) Even a hypothetical language which only used a single word for non-black items, say, "color", for everything else, would be able to perceive the difference with zero problems.

Japanese use "aoi" for a set of colors which in English would be separated into "blue" and "green". I can assure you (from personal experience) that every Japanese speaker with a fully functioning visual system is perfectly able to perceive the difference between, in this case, blue and green as we would call them.

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numtel 3 hours ago | parent [-]

There's a Terence McKenna quote about this:

> So, for instance, you know, I’ve made this example before: a child lying in a crib and a hummingbird comes into the room and the child is ecstatic because this shimmering iridescence of movement and sound and attention, it’s just wonderful. I mean, it is an instantaneous miracle when placed against the background of the dull wallpaper of the nursery and so forth. But, then, mother or nanny or someone comes in and says, “It’s a bird, baby. Bird. Bird!” And, this takes this linguistic piece of mosaic tile, and o- places it over the miracle, and glues it down with the epoxy of syntactical momentum, and, from now on, the miracle is confined within the meaning of the word. And, by the time a child is four or five or six, there- no light shines through. They're- they have tiled over every aspect of reality with a linguistic association that blunts it, limits it, and confines it within cultural expectation.

	▲	em-bee 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		and what is this quote supposed to explain? that language prevents a child from learning nuance? sounds like nonsense to me. a child first learns broad categories. for example some children as they learn to speak think every male person is dad. then they recognize everyone with a beard is dad, because dad has a beard. and only later they learn to differentiate that dad is only one particular person. same goes for the bird. first we learn hat everything with wings is a bird, and later we learn the specific names for each bird. this quote makes an absurd claim.

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trevwilson 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If you're referring to the Himba experiment (or one of the news or blog posts tracing back to it), the outcome was far less decisive than you're implying. Language showed an impact on perception time of color differences, not a complete inability to distinguish.

https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=18237 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00100...

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joriJordan 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Only after we acquire language from sensory experience first.

It need not be language as we know it that fosters those outcomes either.

What you describe is reinforcement education which can be achieved without our language, without the word "blue" we can still see the portion of the visible light spectrum that we associate to the specific word.

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Jensson 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Similarly, some use the same word for blue and white, and are unable to perceive them as different colors.

You really think they can't see clouds in the sky because they have the same word for white and blue? I think you take those studies as saying more than they said.

We do adapt our perception a little bit to fit what we need for our every day life, not for language but whats useful for us. Language matches what people need to talk about, not the other way around, if a cultures language doesn't differentiate between blue and green its because they never needed to.

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emp17344 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Come on, people. This has been debunked a million times. See this Language Log post for thorough takedown of this BS: https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=17970