[postmodest]

What she's describing is the acquisition of our ability to turn experience to story through the tool of language. Imagine a time when you were nearly black-out drunk. You were conscious, but you only existed in that moment; you lacked reflection or forethought that comes with the ability to abstract your experience.

She finally had acquired a tool most of us take for granted--and many of us still struggle to use, preferring to live in that instinctive animalistic ever-reductive singularity of "the present"--and it brought her up to the level of others who grew up with language.

It's unlikely that there's some mysterious level of self-awareness beyond that, because that's kind of what we're wired for.

[galangalalgol]

Even across guman languages we see variation in thought coming from what language can express. We invent languages to describe and communicate our world, but without language tools to express and record something we don't generalize some concepts. The notorious example is societies with no language concept for zero. They still experience eating the last fruit on a bush, or there being no clouds in the sky, but tying those both back to a concept of zero doesn't happen without the word for it. We keep inventing new words. Perhaps one will allow us to make a large jump of aome sorts.

[MrJohz]

> Even across guman languages we see variation in thought coming from what language can express.

Only to a fairly limited extent. For example, there is some evidence that senses like colour and direction have a connection to language, but it's difficult to isolate this effect and say that language is causing the different senses. In other words, is language giving people a better sense of direction? Or is it that people who use their sense of direction a lot develop specialised language for that? This sort of concept is called linguistic relativism, and there's some evidence for it, but it's difficult to quantify or generalise too much.

What there is no evidence for is linguistic determinism, the idea that your language determined how you think and what you are able to think of. For example, your case of the empty bush: yes the people in question may not specifically use the word zero, but they understand what an empty bush is. In research, experiments with people who have no words for numbers showed that they could understand precise numerical quantities, albeit only to a limited extent because they hadn't learned the skill of maths. In other words, it wasn't language limiting them (otherwise they wouldn't be able to understand numbers at all), but having never learned how numbers work, they had never developed the relevant parts of their language.

[galaxyLogic]

> ... no evidence for is linguistic determinism, the idea that your language determined how you think

I think in English so I think language is a vital part of how I think. Sometimes I think in my native language too. But always in a language. Or at least that is what I call "thinking". I can also visualize images in my head but they too are typically accompanied by some language like "I am now visualizing a Hot Dog".

[TheMatten]

> I can also visualize images in my head but they too are typically accompanied by some language like "I am now visualizing a Hot Dog".

I can certainly have thoughts not accompanied by a language, for example visualizing graph-like or higher-dimensional operations from math/CS more quickly than I could come up with their description. Or "simulating" physical objects, or even whole visual scenarios resembling real life.

But it makes me wonder whether it once again isn't about training or being "wired" for different types of thought. And if it's training, then specific language features may as well force people to exercise and improve specific ways of thinking about problems. It's just that it doesn't have to be limited to language.

[dEnigma]

Doesn't your last point support OP's point? If you call it the "language of maths" instead of "skill", it would appear that they were indeed limited by their language. At least basic mathematical ability is ingrained in the language one experiences and uses everyday. Just think of a shopping receipt, or discussion of wages among colleagues, personal expenditures and budgets, poker games, recipes, etc.

[gscott]

Many people are just living in the moment and feel life is happening to them, being able to abstract your experience is not common.

[galaxyLogic]

That is to put it mildly fantastic. And we the normal people don't probably appreciate it often enough. We take it for granted and then a story like Heller's puts focus on it.

Here's a nice book that covers related topics, not sure if it is correct everywhere but it is discussion:

https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780936756363/the-ecstasy-of-commun...