[Whisper]

Language and Thought
               In The Language Instinct, Pinker discusses mentalese, a language composed of mental images. Overall, Pinker claims that people think first in mental images but later apply language to thought. Pinker attacks the position of Benjamin Lee Wharf, who claims that language effects thought. If Wharf is correct, then the according to Pinker the implication is that the foundational categories of reality are not “in” the world but are imposed by one’s culture (Pinker, 1994, p.24). Harrison provides an alternative account of language, stating that it packs information differently (Harrison, 2007, p.46). Harrison does not claim that language can exist independent of thought, but rather that language may store and communicate information in a culture based on that culture’s needs. Therefore, information may be lost when a language is lost. The critical difference is that Pinker points out the imperfections between the correspondence of mental images and language, but he ultimately forwards a view fundamentally incompatible with Harrison’s. The first way in which Harrison’s approach to language as incompatible with Pinker’s, is that Harrison shows how language organizes information based on necessity. The second way in which Harrison’s approach to language is incompatible with Pinker’s, is that Harrison provides evidence of language influencing information, while Pinker instead refutes Wharf’s embellished claims. A final way in which Harrison’s approach is incompatible with Pinker’s, is that Pinker has a mechanical understanding of thought’s relationship to language.

The first way in which Harrison’s approach to language is incompatible with Pinker’s, is that he shows how language organizes information based on necessity. Harrison observes that the Wayampi language has a hierarchal categorization of types of toucans which is based on behavior and it is quite accurate scientifically. He observes that the reason behind this classification is the Toucan’s competition with humans over fruit, which demands much more categorical accuracy. Pinker also covers the accuracy of language when talking about a spectrum, such as color. While color is a continuous spectrum, humans physiologically have three kinds of cones with different pigments.  According to Steven Pinker, how accurate the words we use to divide the color spectrum is arbitrary, since how we see colors determines how we learn the words. Pinker states that depending on how many colors the language specifies, they typically divide up the color spectrum the same way (Pinker, 1994, p.52). He also gives the example of teaching a tribe a color based on a distinct “firetruck red” being more effective than an off-red, since our eyes categorize red against green.  At this point, a critical dichotomy must be made, which is that there is a difference between the information received from the eye and the mental categories and images. Hypothetically, there are infinite different colors, since the spectrum is continuous. However, one chooses to be only as precise as the situation requires. Harrison’s approach to language assumes that language stores knowledge which may aid in how we parse information. However, the categorical knowledge of colors is separate from the ontology of the spectrum. Harrison’s argument does not necessitate that cultural relativism be true, since there are more and less accurate ways of categorizing information. Information that is true is so through more accurately corresponding to reality. Therefore beneficial information may still be lost in a particular culture or language, contradicting Pinker’s account.

The second way in which Harrison’s approach to language is incompatible with Pinker’s, is that Harrison provides evidence of language influencing information, while Pinker instead refutes Wharf’s embellished claims. Harrison does not reject Steven Pinker’s description of thought. Distinctions between subspecies may still be first distinguished via a “mental image”, but then are categorized in language via ostensive definition. Harrison discusses the complex self-organizing behaviors of fish in a school (Harrison, 2007, p.48) . Their social behavior is organized without a type of language that is actively changed by the school of fish. People, on the other hand have many different names for different schooling behaviors of fish. The Marovo people developed a more accurate set of terms than marine biologists themselves (Harrison, 2007, p.50).   Therefore the loss of information is a bio-informatics crisis, according to Harrison. Steven Pinker oftentimes focuses on refuting Wharf’s claims which appear embellished in order to promote a specific type of cultural relativism. Wharf talks about fundamental concepts like time itself not existing in other cultures, lacking substantial anthropological evidence. Overall, Wharf tries to suggest that fundamental concept about reality are lost in translation by blowing evidence out of proportion. Pinker shows the inaccuracies of language in how ambiguous and inaccurate it may be, but he does not address how languages may be conditioned to be more accurate. Taxonomy and technical languages progress to be more accurate, although folk taxonomies may occasionally supersede Darwinian taxonomies if the native culture has done more observing.

Finally, the critical difference between Harrison and Pinker is that Harrison takes into account extra details concerning how mental images are shared and communicated when corresponding to language. Chiefly, Pinker negates this with his argument of a mechanical process of thought. As an example of how we think in mental images, Pinker uses an example of infants having a sense of the number of Mickey Mouse Dolls in small amounts, and actually become more curious when the number of dolls change. While this might be misconstrued to an example of humans understanding in mental images, that ability to sense a group versus one alone is a survival instinct, and breaks down if a larger number of dolls were introduced. Pinker also gives us a contradicting perspective on cognition. He compares humans’ fundamental ability to detect patterns to a Turing machine which uses basic mechanistic logic to process information. It logically follows that the mind is a processor which responds to different pieces of representation. Yet he admits that there is an element of dynamism to the human mind, which allows us to contextually interpret language, even ambiguous language. Harrison accepts that human cognition is the same at the core independent of language, but he also states that people have different ways of conceptualizing and discussing the world. In this way, Harrison’s view is incompatible with Pinker’s generalizations about thought

               In conclusion, Harrison’s approach is a much more detailed account of the relationship between language and thought, which is fundamentally incompatible with some of Pinker’s assertions. The first way in which Harrison shows his approach to language as incompatible with Pinker’s, is that Harrison shows how language organizes information based on necessity. The second way in which Harrison’s approach to language is incompatible with Pinker’s, is that Harrison provides evidence of language influencing information, while Pinker instead refutes Wharf’s embellished claims. A final way in which Harrison’s approach is incompatible with Pinker’s, is that Pinker has a mechanical understanding of thought’s relationship to language. Steven Pinker treats mental images as if they are absolute, and superior to linguistic definition. Technically terminology allows for refinement within language, and meaning may be lost therefore between languages if they become more general. In scientific fields such as chemistry, people need to have terms in order to communicate processes. Doing complicated chemistry in layman’s terms in simply impossible or very close to it.
 
References
Harrison, D. (2007). An Extinction of (Ideas about) Species. In When Languages Die: The extinction of the World’s languages and the erosion of human knowledge (p.46, p.48, p.50). New York: Oxford University Press.
Pinker, S. (1994). The Language Instinct. (p.24, p.52). NY.

[Rubsy]

Interesting, although I do wonder if the human mind can always overlook differences in favour of similarities. For example when people translate a word from a foreign language they concentrate on the similarities between the meaning of their equivalent and not the differences, so a lot of subtleties are lost. I think this helps to systemise information by relating new information to an old system, however a lot of information is lost. We do this with history all the time, that historians know that they may be biased by their own times to their view of history.
[hr]
In summary the article above is an argument against cultural/language relativity, due to pragmatic concerns and physical evolution out weighing cultural evolution. I think that might be framing it in the extreme though, because the claims seem small and well thought out, but it leans to that side.

[Whisper]

Yeah both weigh heavily to that side and these are pretty empirical claims. Harrison’s argument if extended further may at least attempt to explain cultural evolution in respect to humans drives. Pinker is very abstract. I like his influence from Noam Chomsky though, it is the stronger parts of his writing.

[Author]

Posts