[anbende]

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 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.

[sfvisser]

The fact that some things are more easily — or better, directly — expressable in some languages doesn’t necessarily imply your thinking is changed or that you can’t internalize the concept without access to that language.

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.

[s1artibartfast]

Yes, but think about languages that don't have the concept of green, but only a shade of blue that we would call green.

This would not stop your ability to describe it, but would change how you relate it to other colors.

[krisoft]

> Imagine a system of gears. Turn them and adjust them in your mind. You’re thinking in images rather than language.

How is this demonstrating anything? Can someone do the same who doesn't know what a gear is?

[mcphage]

The idea is that it an example of explicitly non-linguistic thinking—hence not all thinking can be defined or limited by linguistic structures.

[hprotagonist]

a counterpoint is that this example begs the question; it assumes a priori that “thinking about gears” is not a language itself.

which, who knows, it might be!

[mcphage]

Unless you already start with the assumption that all mental processing is language, I don't think "rotating gears in your head" qualifies as a language. I mean, you can have discussions about what constitutes "language", but there are a number of expected attributes, and visually rotating shapes in your mind doesn't possess any of them.

[JackFr]

Extra points for a rare completely appropriate use of “begs the question.”

[ArnoVW]

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?

[kergonath]

It also would not be propagated along with the culture, which is the hypothesis at its core: not that people of one given language are incapable of understanding some concepts, but rather that their cultural bagage tends to bias them and shape their way of thinking (which I would think is obviously true to anyone who’s ever lived in a foreign country or read literature or news articles in a foreign language).

[Retric]

The constant creation of new words for new things and concepts seems to limit that idea.

Only dead languages are static, otherwise they can all adapt to new ideas as long as their sufficiently useful.

[kergonath]

It is not incompatible, the time scales involved are different.

[Retric]

By limit I mean the scope of it’s impact is limited. If new ideas become new words then language isn’t a limitation on idea formation, expression, or spread.

Sure some ideas might spread more easily as say an obvious and catchy campaign slogan, there is a maximum benefit to such advantages. “A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work” is longer say “No taxation without representation” but number of works doesn’t seem to be a major limitation here. People just encode such ideas into otherwise meaningless slogans like “Promises Kept.” Soon people don’t wonder what “The wage gap” or “Pro life” is referring to.

[JackFr]

I see your point but I feel it’s a little bit weakened by the fact that you’re limited to using words to describe it.

Can you conceive of a thought experiment that is impossible to put into words? Yes or no is acceptable, but if the answer is yes I guess I’ll have to take your word for it.

[lukeschlather]

It depends on what you mean by "conceive" and "thought experiment." If the thought experiment can be expressed, you can come up with a word to describe the expression of the idea. I think I could imagine some inexpressible ideas (this seems like it would logically follow from the proof that some things are not computable.)

Of course, when you deal with real language your language itself is constrained. If you need to invent a bunch of new words does that count?

[KVFinn]

The extra soft version is that verbal languages are interchangeable, but there are differences between verbal languages and nonverbal, like sign language.