11–20 of 167 posts
TL;DR: We have no idea if they were real, and if they were what caused them, and it's ok to be unsure and inconclusive sometimes.
That a succession of women served as Oracles in the Temple of Apollo (for hundreds of years) is well supported.
Language shaping the way you think always feels off to me. Most languages are pretty much universal and unbiased and are capable of expressing an infinite amount of concepts. As easily as their negations, subtle variations, contextual dependencies, nuances, etc.
If this is true for formal languages -- why would wouldn't this phenomena be accentuated at the natural language level.
Language shaping the way you think always feels off to me. Most languages are pretty much universal and unbiased and are capable of expressing an infinite amount of concepts. As easily as their negations, subtle variations, contextual dependencies, nuances, etc.
The soft version of this, that our thinking is influenced by the limits of language is almost certainly true. To give a very HN example, think about the work done in different programming languages or stacks. The way you think about a problem and how to solve it will be influenced by the language and tools you use (and know). You learn to think in a particular language or tool set. That doesn’t mean that you can’t think outside of it, but it does mean that there is a tendency to stay inside of it, inside the structures you know.
In the same way, some languages lend themselves more readily to certain culturally prevalent concepts. More nuanced words for snow or love, different color boundaries, different emotion words or nuances, etc.
I ran into this often when learning French as an emotion researcher. I’d try to express a scientific conception of a mood or emotion from English, and the French speaker would suggest a translation but it clearly didn’t mean exactly what I was going for. And the way the French speaker would push back was interesting, “we wouldn’t say it like that, we’d say it like this”. But the “this” and “that” were not exactly the same. I was watching us both be constrained by our language context. It could be pushed through, but the tendency was to just move forward as if we’d reached common ground but hadn’t fully.
> Moreover, ethylene in the concentrations that cause trances is extremely flammable, and there’s no historical record of any explosions or fires. That doesn't seem to be true. Herodotus 2.180: "When the Amphictyons paid three hundred talents to have the temple that now stands at Delphi finished (as that which was formerly there burnt down by accident), it was the Delphians' lot to pay a fourth of the cost." [1] I'm…
Greek: "ὁ γὰρ πρότερον ἐὼν αὐτόθι αὐτόματος κατεκάη"
(http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%...)
Literal translation: "because the one [= the temple] that previously existed in the same place completely burned down on its own"
The crux here is on "αὐτόματος", for which see LSJ: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=au%29to%2Fmatos&...
> Moreover, ethylene in the concentrations that cause trances is extremely flammable, and there’s no historical record of any explosions or fires. That doesn't seem to be true. Herodotus 2.180: "When the Amphictyons paid three hundred talents to have the temple that now stands at Delphi finished (as that which was formerly there burnt down by accident), it was the Delphians' lot to pay a fourth of the cost." [1] I'm…
Language shaping the way you think always feels off to me. Most languages are pretty much universal and unbiased and are capable of expressing an infinite amount of concepts. As easily as their negations, subtle variations, contextual dependencies, nuances, etc.
The hard version of this, sometimes called Strong Whorfianism (after the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis) is relatively easy to discredit. Imagine a system of gears. Turn them and adjust them in your mind. You’re thinking in images rather than language. The soft version of this, that our thinking is influenced by the limits of language is almost certainly true. To give a very HN example, think about the work done in different…
In theory you can imagine a concept, not give it a name, and still use it. You can't communicate it through, which severely limits it's use. And somehow I suspect that naming the concept makes it easier to manipulate, so perhaps that is a 'weak' version of the theory?
Language shaping the way you think always feels off to me. Most languages are pretty much universal and unbiased and are capable of expressing an infinite amount of concepts. As easily as their negations, subtle variations, contextual dependencies, nuances, etc.
The hard version of this, sometimes called Strong Whorfianism (after the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis) is relatively easy to discredit. Imagine a system of gears. Turn them and adjust them in your mind. You’re thinking in images rather than language. The soft version of this, that our thinking is influenced by the limits of language is almost certainly true. To give a very HN example, think about the work done in different…
How is this demonstrating anything? Can someone do the same who doesn't know what a gear is?
Language shaping the way you think always feels off to me. Most languages are pretty much universal and unbiased and are capable of expressing an infinite amount of concepts. As easily as their negations, subtle variations, contextual dependencies, nuances, etc.
The hard version of this, sometimes called Strong Whorfianism (after the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis) is relatively easy to discredit. Imagine a system of gears. Turn them and adjust them in your mind. You’re thinking in images rather than language. The soft version of this, that our thinking is influenced by the limits of language is almost certainly true. To give a very HN example, think about the work done in different…
I don’t have twenty different words for specific shades of green or types of snow, but can still easily recognize them and use them in my thinking.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The hard version of this, sometimes called Strong Whorfianism (after the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis) is relatively easy to discredit. Imagine a system of gears. Turn them and adjust them in your mind. You’re thinking in images rather than language. The soft version of this, that our thinking is influenced by the limits of language is almost certainly true. To give a very HN example, think about the work done in different…
I tended to agree with the soft version. But I just realized, what it's saying is that you need to know about a concept. The language is not necessary. In theory you can imagine a concept, not give it a name, and still use it. You can't communicate it through, which severely limits it's use. And somehow I suspect that naming the concept makes it easier to manipulate, so perhaps that is a 'weak' version of the theory?