Effects of Language on Perception and Belief
A total speculation on the relationship between percepts, concepts and words, but I'd be interested in getting your input.
Premises: concepts are caused by perceptions, words assist in conveying concepts to oneself and others, and words generate the perception of concepts.
Argument: the more that words are necessary to stimulate a concept, and language is indispensable in many civilized contexts, the more the concept will be disposed to seem like a perception, for it is eliciting the experience rather than being caused by it. Because of this, we tend to reify concepts acquired and manipulated linguistically, viewing them as an actual perception itself rather than an interpretation of perceptions.
So if I'm considering a computer in front of me, the verbal/conceptual complex of my mind leads me to identify many particulars of the perception holistically, as a computer, while neglecting 99% of possible content in the experience.
Does language channel our focus in such a way that it affects what we observe even at the level of basic percepts? If this is the case, what are the implications for emergence of a worldview? How much in our beliefs is merely a function of the language we happen to employ? How radically can experience of reality change with modifications to language use?
I realize this is rather vague, not quite sure how to articulate it, but maybe you guys have some insights.
Premises: concepts are caused by perceptions, words assist in conveying concepts to oneself and others, and words generate the perception of concepts.
Argument: the more that words are necessary to stimulate a concept, and language is indispensable in many civilized contexts, the more the concept will be disposed to seem like a perception, for it is eliciting the experience rather than being caused by it. Because of this, we tend to reify concepts acquired and manipulated linguistically, viewing them as an actual perception itself rather than an interpretation of perceptions.
So if I'm considering a computer in front of me, the verbal/conceptual complex of my mind leads me to identify many particulars of the perception holistically, as a computer, while neglecting 99% of possible content in the experience.
Does language channel our focus in such a way that it affects what we observe even at the level of basic percepts? If this is the case, what are the implications for emergence of a worldview? How much in our beliefs is merely a function of the language we happen to employ? How radically can experience of reality change with modifications to language use?
I realize this is rather vague, not quite sure how to articulate it, but maybe you guys have some insights.
Comments (54)
Yes. Neural priming.
Quoting Enrique
Don’t understand. Can you explain in mire detail?
Quoting Enrique
Forget about how much, how would we quantify this? Can we quantify this? I imagine there is some loose way of relating ‘belief’ to ‘language,’ but I guess it would depend exactly on what we were trying to look at.
Quoting Enrique
VERY radically. Obviously this isn’t instant and/or common or we’d have a hard time orientating ourselves.
I think this is a question which psycholinguistics is set to tackle if you value psychology's opinion. I know studies exist where language has been demonstrated to affect the formation of certain beliefs. Actually, that's kind of what rhetoric is supposed to be about, and that's been knocking around since ancient times.
If it's not personal variance, then it could be domain-related variance, as in a domain of knowledge and the vocabulary orbiting that knowledge. For example, it could be the case that people familiar with Catholic vocabulary are somehow more inclined to see things through a (Trinity-inspired) 3-sided logic.
(And for the record.. I don't see how neural priming phenomena are applicable here.)
Yes, though it doesn't pay to run too far with that idea (as was the fashion at one time). Still, there's a lot of fun, unexpected things that we have learned about this. See for instance Lera Boroditsky's publications, such as How language shapes thought.
I don’t see how it could possibly be denied. Everything perceptual experience depends upon what happened before it. It doesn’t take much though to see that IOR (inhibition of return) plays a role in how we perceive the world, and will therefore effect our perception of this. There are numerous instances that clearly show how we can be primed to respond in certain ways through use of language - not that I am suggesting that ‘language’ is or isn’t the same thing as ‘neural priming’.
Gazzaniga is famous for doing many different studies on split-brain patients. His research shows the full extend of how the brain hemispheres act independently and give completely different answers based on the same prompts. The myth of language existing in the left hemisphere is just that. Both hemispheres are capable of reacting to prompts but the both respond differently.
Something very interesting is how the two hemispheres ‘communicated’ in the physical world actions NOT directly. The ‘communication’ was happening ‘outside’ the brain.
These talks are quite interesting if you wish to look:
https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8AD2B712B1A0578F
If it refers to neurons in an ordinary, biological kind of way then this is also potentially confusing since the neurons are kind of implied, no? The role of neurons in mental contents as opposed to.. not-neurons?
While launching as few tangents as possible, those were my thoughts when I suspected it was inapplicable. I'm also not sure how Gazzaniga's work fits into that but I understand why he's mentioned.
I took this to be a topic about the role of language in belief and on the nature of mental contents, which is a highly speculative thing, but any connection to neural priming, assuming such a thing exists, strikes me as indistinct, if not nakedly conjectural. So.. your persistence is answered but no grouchiness is intended!
It’s a term used by many cognitive neuroscientists. Priming in sometimes used interchangeably, but generally speaking ‘priming’ refers more to ‘visual priming’ - essentially the same effect has been mapped in neurons in other instances.
Things like NLP are much more sketchy, but they popularity by mashing up psychological effects and attaching them to sparse neurological evidence as if it’s ‘proven’.
In terms of language it undoubtedly effects how we view the world. For instance, Korean infants are taught Korean with a strong emphasis on prepositions, whereas in most other languages parents focus more strongly on nouns. Studies have shown that children from around 2-4 (roughly, cannot remember off the cuff) can solve cognitive puzzles at different speeds due to this - Korean youngster surpassing others in spacial tasks where the others surpass the Korean youngsters in category tasks (admittedly this difference evaporate by the time the children hit about 5-6 yrs old). That said, when shown a quick flash of picture of a fish tank (this is from Gazzaniga lecture) and asked what they saw a European adult will just say ‘a fish tank’ where Asian adults are more likely to give a more detailed description - not conclusive, but there is clearly a different focus of attention when the task is given (something purely linguistic or partly educational, is there a serious difference?)
Quoting Zophie
Cognitive neuroscience is the hardest science there is that can reveal, in part, what the mechanisms of cognition are - which absolutely involve all aspects of consciousness including language development, perception and how we map the world. Priming is a term used throughout the cognitive neurosciences are there are plenty of studies focused on it because memory is of huge interest to many people for many reasons. Psychology has been revived by technological advances that have given a much deeper insight into brain functioning.
I’m not inclined to go down the dualist route of body and mind as separate entities. You can if you wish, whether you find it to be a useful theoretic distinction or a literal one. For me it’s not massively important when scientific evidence, soft or hard, is useful in offering a perspective that can be substantiated to some objective degree.
No one would deny that visual priming is a thing, and tests have been done that observe what neural pathways are firing when this happens. Neurons are certainly involved in mental processes, that would be an extremely difficult thing to argue against from my position.
It is a very broad and fascinating field.
From a psychosocial angle, which is one I'm more comfortable with, it goes without saying that translating from one language to another throws up weird artifacts of meaning. For example, the Ancient Greek ???????????, counterpart, literally means twisted together, which I traced back to originating in ordinary rope. Clearly vocabulary binds fluent speakers to a certain scheme, as your Korean example alludes to.
All I know for sure is that I'm pedantic about language. I'll try to make that as tolerable as possible.
GOOD! :)
Can you elaborate some? What relationship might this have if any to theoretical modeling, if that makes sense.
Quoting Enrique
I’d still like some clarification at this question please.
Preconceived concepts direct our perception, not language as such. You have a concept of what the thing is that we happen to call a computer, but the word as such is irrelevant. Imagine a child who was not taught any language but was allowed to play around with a computer. It would be restricted to use pictures and not words, but there would still be opportunities for quite advanced computers skills. Of course the child would recognize its toy and that means it would have a concept of it.
On the other hand, imagine someone who saw a computer for the first time, and who had no reference points outside the rainforest, say. He would not make any sense of it, would notice different parts than what is usually considered most relevant for a computer, like its color and smooth surface. If this person formed a concept of it at all, it would only happen if it had a vague resemblance of anything he had already seen. But at no point would the lack of a word for that object be the obstacle and he wouldn’t get our concept of a computer even if he was told what the object was called.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMqZR3pqMjg
Sorry for YouTube but this illustrates precisely what I mean to say. I can clarify using mythology if you like.
Just like people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrinsically_photosensitive_retinal_ganglion_cells
Bloody mouthful! :D
By worldview I just mean the collection of beliefs, opinions, valuated facts as an individual's general outlook on reality. I was wanting to explore how language links percepts and complex conceptual perspectives in both effective and fallacious ways.
As far as intuitions I have into my own thinking and observations of thought, which is all I really have to go on at this stage, it seems like language assists in differentiating and expanding concepts into richer conceptual frameworks. Verbal explicitness, especially in writing, makes the conceptual structures of thinking so artificially fixed as a definitional framework that constraints and boundaries in one's reasoned associating leap out as glaring, arbitrary and modifiable delimitations. Its like the ideas become a more tangible frame of reference to build upon and remodel. Language allows the content of thought to adopt much more complex architectures, and working out ideas linguistically remakes the mind itself somehow also, but to what extent I'm not sure, and in many contexts this function of language isn't even operative perhaps.
Those are some basic thoughts on the topic, I don't have a mechanistic sense of how any of this occurs neurally or psychologically aside from the observation that facility in making more and better kinds of generalizations seems to be greatly enhanced by critically assessing written language, which I think intersects with Husserl's kind of phenomenological theory as to how intuitive form gets translated into logical form and maybe vice versa as we cognize. With analytical language, its like you can revolutionize your own mind at will, as evinced by the stages of development that some of the most influential academics have displayed in their literature, Freud, Wittgenstein, maybe Heidegger, etc. But similar personal evolutions occur in completely nonlinguistic domains such as visual art, so there's obviously much more going on.
This entire nexus of perception, conception, language, theory, self and logic is kind of mysterious to me.
Quoting Congau
I was thinking about that, the concept is adjuncted by language, but the actual thought itself is only fractionally, maybe even negligibly linguistic. Its almost like the conceptual process is more foundational to the mind than the linguistic process, but language happens to most explicitly demonstrate it and maybe motivationally prompt it by some kind of superficial conceptual maneuver.
Yeah! We are certainly intrigued by similar things. Noticed that a while ago.
Quoting Language and Thought
These theses are understandably controversial. There is plenty of evidence indicating that language and thought are intertwined, but identifying causality is not so straightforward. Does thought drive language or the other way around? Or do other factors like ecology drive both thought and language?
Here is one recent review:
Quoting Phillip Wolff and Kevin J. Holmes, Linguistic relativity
However, you will also find both stronger and more skeptical claims, more-or-less supported by research.
It will be interesting to see how researchers progressively construct theoretical models and accompanying definitions from the empirical results going forward. I suspect their experimentally derived accounts of "schematic thinking" will eventually allow for some synthesis with the vocabulary of phenomenology.
Maybe the relativity is located deeper than language and culture, but is actually a relativity within the individual self, which might explain the conflicting results, with schematic thinking induced in only some investigative situations. Intentionality of the psyche could be composed of multiple modes or holistic settings, which some casually call "headspaces", and the self might mature as a kind of mode-selection phenomenon, so that while most of even conscious brain processes are not within full intentional control, the self can participate in conditioning or "neural priming" the psyche it resides in, then choose and sustain holistic activation orientations as brain region combos at will in many cases, a capability beneficial for more intensively sociocognitive circumstances.
Could be why education into high functioning rationality is such a nerve-wracking experience: humans have to master impulsive psychical inclinations and also reorg or reject socially adaptive headspaces for analytical purposes, attaining the unnatural self-consistency and noncontradictoriness of intellectual integrity, inspiration for Plato's cave analogy? Maybe this is why philosophers don't make "good" politicians lol
I am not sure what you are asking. What do the designations mean? You can read the links and follow the references inside, but I think you already know something about this area.
Existing research understandably focuses on fairly modest cognitive functions that can be tested experimentally, such as color discrimination (thanks for the video, by the way); the more ambitious the hypothesis, the more speculative it is likely to be.
Quoting Enrique
I don't know much about this, but my take, for what it's worth, is that cognitive activity, including but not limited to abstract thought, is thoroughly entangled with language, so that one should expect some causal entanglement as well. But I have a feeling that in most cases, causal factors going between language and thought are not clearly separable from other causal factors and contingencies. We'll see. When you read about this psychological research, you can't help but admire the ingenuity with which researchers find ways to tease out causal links.
1. I KNOW LIGHT.
2. Yellow, 3, 4....
In 1, wordlessly, you mean 2.
1 = 2.
With word, 'I know light' - to the follow up question, 'what about light?', is an extension that is like a evil dream. It is complete stupidity, you may as well say 2 instead of 1.
If knowledge is just "point (1) and click (2)", it's a type of transmission and reception.
Search your mind for knowledge, is there a pool of all that you know? Yes but it's ineffable.
'Knowledge' as a pool is non existent, you do wordlessly, or do not control this part.
Knowledge as brain transmission and sense data reception is better.
1. Route memory(initial transmit) to put a lightbulb where one is missing(just the socket). Chances are you'll deviate to saying a word or just silence.
2. Coming over your head, out of your control, is the knowledge, or it has already and you're just ego stupid.
It's the right direction but incomplete, per se, gears and other.
No way. No how.
Language does channel our focus. That focus has no affect upon what we're observing.
Trees are not at all affected by the fact that we call them "trees". If language channeled our focus in such a way that language affects what we observe then it would certainly affect trees. It doesn't.
Concepts are names of things. What's being named though? What are we picking out of this world to the exclusion of all else? Does it exist in it's entirety prior to our doing so?
These are the important aspects to consider when talking about 'concepts'.
They are nothing more than linguistic constructs. "Truth" the term, is the name. What's being named is the referent. The concept of "truth" consists of and/or includes both.
Correspondence with what's happened and/or is happening requires neither being named "truth" or being further talked about.
The term, the concept, of "truth" requires language. Correspondence does not. It exists in it's entirety prior to our awareness of it. So, when the term "truth" is used as a name to talk about correspondence, it is referring to that which existed in it's entirety prior to language use itself.
When the term "truth" is used to pick out a valid inference from a logical argument, it is not pointing to something which existed in it's entirety prior to language use.
Not all concepts are on equal footing.
I don't think language channels our focus.
When you say 'I know', in response to, 'what do we do?', saying I know is just a word.
The process of knowing happened physically as the query was made.
'I wanna talk about carrots'; there I channeled our thoughts to carrots, but am I really focused, and is that the reason for the channelling?
I mean, why did I pick carrots?
I'd differ. I'd say no. The next step is to follow wiki or some derelict, ledged information on carrots.
'Orange', 'food', etc. Pop into mind.
I think words are mallcious to thought process. Again, why carrots?
If I went through the same process of channeling thought - how I do I decide what channeling I want?
Suddenly, I think bulbs, apples or trees. There is no morality here.
What are you talking about again? Tell me all about it... focus my attention... without using language.
I think we disagree on that.
When one says "I know" in response to, "What do we do?", saying "I know" is not 'just a word'.
Again, we seem to disagree.
Knowledge of that includes knowledge of language, perception, and belief in addition to any and all relevant causal relationships/connections/associations one may draw between the three. That's quite a mountain to climb. Climbing it requires prep work. I want to start with some common sense stuff, then return to the notion in the OP.
Perception does not require language. Belief does not either. However, belief does require perception, as does language. As a result, we know that some of the most basic rudimentary thought and belief exist in their entirety prior to language. We know that language cannot effect what the most basic of beliefs consist in/of. Language does not effect what basic belief is existentially dependent upon.
All language is belief based, whereas not all belief is language based. So...
The effects that language acquisition and use has upon belief and perception is only understood in terms of being but one necessary elemental constituent therein. Remember, not all belief consists of and/or or is existentially dependent upon language use.
Language cannot effect what non-linguistic belief and perception consist of.
Perception and belief prior to language, and perception and belief afterwards, and the remarkable differences between them as well as any direct causal connection.
What counts as perception prior to language? Or belief prior to the same, for that matter?
Whatever it is, it does not include language. Thus, however language effects it, that effect will not include any change whatsoever in the elemental constituency of either. Furthermore, whatever effect happens it is an effect including that same elemental constituency, whatever it may include.
Introducing language to a language less creature does not effect/affect what that creature's pre-existing belief consisted of. Rather, it is supposed that the introduction effects/affects the subsequent belief or perception.
Pouring milk upon dry cereal does not effect/affect what the cereal was made of prior to the introduction event.
That's perhaps the best analogy for supporting all my suggestions regarding how we ought approach this topic.
All belief consists of mental correlations drawn between different things. Sometimes one of those things is language use itself. When this happens, the language begins to effect/affect the creature(I suppose we can say) as a direct result of 'causing' it to draw correlations between the language use and something else(or other things).
The language is sometimes said to 'inform' the thought or belief. Linguistically informed belief is belief that is existentially dependent upon language in a very specific way... that an integral part of that particular belief is language use.
All metacognition is linguistically informed, for example.
However, prior to being able to think about one's own thought and belief, one must have something to think about as well as the ability and/or means for picking it out to the exclusion of all else and subsequently considering it as a subject matter in and of itself. Language affords one such a 'luxury'. Nothing else suffices. Naming and descriptive practices are required to pick out one's own mental ongoings, of which perception and belief are most certainly included.
They key take-away here is that we can be wrong about belief and perception, and are if we do not drawn and maintain the key distinction between basic rudimentary basic belief and belief that consists of and/or is existentially dependent upon language by virtue of language use being one of the necessary elemental constituents therein.
If we are mistaken about belief regarding what it consists of, at a bare minimum, then we are sure to be mistaken about any particular effects/affects that language may or may not have upon it, simply because we do not know what is being affected/effected. No way to know how belief is effected/affected if we do not first know what it is that's being effected/effected. Knowing what to look for precedes the looking.
Until those two things are rightly understood in terms of what they consist of, then there can be no hope in possibly understanding how language begins to affect/effect them.
I'd be interested to get a description of your concept "metacognition". What is the relationship between cognitive structure and linguistic structure in this case?
Metacognition is thinking about thought and belief. The second question does not make much sense to me. Cognition and language both consist of correlations, but talking in terms of relationship between structure is fraught.
Think I agree with the way you partitioned the concepts. A distinction certainly exists between perception/belief as somehow etched in cognition, language as a mechanism for expressing /interpreting these perceptions/beliefs, and the kind of perception/belief acquisition that only occurs in conjunction with language use.
The question I have is whether language use is intrinsic to the structure of the concepts in language-influenced belief and related perceptions or merely a passive means of representation for what is being etched in cognition by a perhaps substantially nonlinguistic mechanism despite the greater complexity or experiential indirectness. That's what I'm getting at with the idea of structure: does language use pattern language-acquired thought such that the thought cannot even occur without language use, or is language more superficial? To what extent is the logicality or associational structure of language itself a constituent component of the thought itself? Does this vary by conceptual context and nonnegligibly between different minds?
That's not how I 'partitioned the concepts'(whatever that's supposed to mean). Nor would I even agree with such a parsing for reasons that need not be gotten into at this time. You've misunderstood something somewhere along the line, I'm sorry to say. Although, there could be much agreement. I mean, the above report may not be too far off to be of good use.
Perhaps this will help to clarify my position and thus whether or not it's true that you do agree with the position I'm advocating for/from...
All concepts consist of language use. Thus, they are existentially dependent upon language. Some conceptions pick something out of this world that exists in it's entirety prior to being noticed, and others do not.
Belief, perception, and language exist in their entirety prior to our taking note of them. If one's conception of any of the three cannot take this into proper account, then they've gotten something wrong somewhere along the line about them.
Perception is the simplest of the three, with belief being the second, and language beng the most complex. Language is existentially dependent upon(requires) both belief and perception. When and where there has never been belief, there could never be language. When and where there has never been perception there could never be belief.
I would not say that language effects one's perception. Whereas it certainly effects one's beliefs, emotions, and 'states' of mind.
I would be very hesitant to talk in terms of structure here...
Some belief requires language. It's rather simple really. All belief consist of correlations drawn between different things. When language use is one of those things, that particular belief is existentially dependent upon language use. Language use is a necessary elemental constituent thereof. Such thought or belief cannot exist without language in much the same way that an apple pie cannot exist without apples.
It has nothing to do with structure, and everything to do with necessary elemental constituency and existential dependency.
I think I've just answered this bit.
Can you provide a specific instance of this? I'm not sure I've accurately grasped what you have in mind.
This very conversation is perhaps a perfect example of this.
So I gather that you mean a cognitive process of making correlations is interposed between perception and language, with varying degrees of generality, and some kinds of correlations can be made without language while some cannot. If my interpretation is accurate, what does this correlative activity consist of? How would you characterize its composition?
That's better, but I hesitate to frame the discussion in terms of "without language", for it allows segue into a conflation between being unspoken and being existentially independent of language. One could say that unspoken thought and belief does not require language or that unspoken thought and belief is an example of thought or belief 'without' language.
The "correlative activity"(your term, not mine) is thought and belief. It requires(is existentially dependent upon) a plurality of things and a creature capable of drawing correlations between different things. It consists of mental correlations.
How do you causally relate the plurality of correlation to the perceptual manifold? I have my own ideas but I'm trying to see if I can validate or improve the model.
I do not. The notion of "perceptual manifold" is not something that I find appealing. I prefer the simplest possible adequate explanation, and find no need for such language use.
What is "the perceptual manifold" on your view?
The perceptual manifold is basically all qualia constitutive of qualitative experience. I was curious how you would explicitly fit the concept of correlation together with a concept of qualitative experience.
I would begin by dropping the excessive language.
You prove to me what inference is not, narrows down the relevant context quite a lot, so thanks. I mean that in a good way lol
You're more than welcome, although I'm not sure how I helped or in what way.
:smile:
How would you relate your concept of correlation to intentional and deliberative thought?
All thought and belief, ranging from the simplest to the most complex, consists entirely of mental correlations drawn between different things. If intentional and deliberative thought is a kind of thought, and I'm right about what all thought and belief consists in/of, then intentional and deliberative thought consists of mental correlations satisfying whatever counts as being intentional and deliberative thought as compared/contrasted to/with other kinds.
Having been interested in doing philosophy for some time, I've a significant amount of uncertainty regarding the criterion another is working, especially in situations such as this one, as it is quite the nuanced conversation. Common sense tells me that that name could be rightfully, meaningfully, acceptably, and/or sensibly used in a plurality of differing ways, not all of which are amenable to one another. More plainly put, it could be used to pick out all different sorts of things, including many things that are not what I'm picking out to the exclusion of all else. Hence... my apprehension is prevalent.
Here's the simpest use/sense of that term that makes perfect sense to me...
Intentional and deliberate thought always consists of a creature focused upon something in particular. That kind of thought and belief would show itself early on. If such thought existed in it's entirety prior to language use, then it does not consist of language use.
Language use could become the focus. Language use certainly helps determine the focus. Language use can and does become an integral elemental constituent of the thought and belief of language users. Language use becomes a necessary elemental constituent of thought when that thought includes mental correlations being drawn between language use and something else.
Intentional and deliberate thought does not always include language, but certainly can.
So, how does language use effect/affect intentional and deliberate thought?
It broadens the scope.
This example seems to correlate well with the externalist view of belief and meaning. We have an artifact in the world and an interpretation by which the word forms and categorizes. What I find curious is where these priorities of say the Korean group on prepositions (I live in Korea and have never heard of this!) and that of Europeans prioritizing nouns comes from. The environmental pressures narrow focus and create differences in behavior which creates differences in linguistic focus? That seems too easy of an explanation.