[popalchemist]

Western culture is predicated on a sort of positivist metaphysics, and our language reflects that. Whereas in the east, the langauges and cultures have both long ago (as in, thousands of years ago) assimilated the precepts of non-dualism, which brings with it a greater degree of subtlety, through its embedded understanding of equanimity, dependent arising, and so on. It's a different ontological root, and therefore a different schema altogether.

Knowing what I know of you guys in NZ, a lot of that sort of thinking has made its way into popular understanding by way of encounters with the Maori people, and some of it has to do with more modern notions of pluralism, and some of it has to do with British politeness.

All that to say, it is not your fault nor the Americans fault that there's a gap in understanding. It's the byproduct of where those two schemas do not connect.

[idiotsecant]

The idea that all non-western practices, language included, have a deep and amazing and metaphysical quality that westerners simply couldn't understand is so tiresome. No language is more expressive than another, some are more expressive for particular very specific things, like Inuit languages might be much better at describing the varieties of snow, but no language has a monopoly on describing dualism of ideas. It's just as silly to be overly dismissive of the language you're familiar with as it is to be overly dismissive of others.

[gsf_emergency_6]

How about tripartism of ideas?

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S08886...

https://www.academia.edu/45462252/The_Logic_Structure_of_Tao...

Okay, these are probably posthoc retcons

[inavida]

I've just noticed this hierarchal tripartism so I'm happy to see that other people have retconned it too.

[rramadass]

> The idea that all non-western practices, language included, have a deep and amazing and metaphysical quality that westerners simply couldn't understand is so tiresome.

The author did not say this; this is your unnecessarily negative take. However the author is comparing Chinese with English where this is somewhat true and well studied; eg. A Comparison of Chinese and English Language Processing - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/chapter/bookseries/abs... Google will give you lots more info. on this.

> No language is more expressive than another,

Objectively false. This is the same meaningless logic that since almost all programming languages are Turing Complete and can simulate any Turing Machine therefore they are equivalent. In a abstract sense they are but for all practical purposes the notion is useless as anybody trying to program in C++ vs. Haskell vs. Prolog will tell you. This is why you have the concept of "Paradigms" and "Worldviews".

Every culture imposes a "Philosophical Worldview" on the Languages it invents.

An ancient Indian Philosopher named Bhartṛhari (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhart%E1%B9%9Bhari) actually founded a school of philosophy where language is linked to cognition-by-itself with cognition-of-content i.e. subject+object+communication as a "whole understanding". He called this Sphota (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spho%E1%B9%ADa) defined as "bursting forth" of meaning or idea on the mind as language is uttered. This is the reason why in ancient Sanskrit literature there is so much emphasis on oral tradition i.e. using right words, right utterances, right tones etc.

Previous discussion Words for the Heart: A treasury of emotions from classical India - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43249766

Also see the book The Word and the World: India's Contribution to the Study of Language by Bimal Krishna Matilal which gives an overview of Bhartrhari's (and others) ideas - https://archive.org/details/wordandtheworldindiascontributio...

[idiotsecant]

It is pretty unanimously agreed by linguists that all language is equally expressive, which makes sense considering they were all made by humans to do the same thing.

[rramadass]

No; I had already refuted this in my earlier comment.

Language is a product of Geography and Culture to express a "Philosophical Worldview". Mere study of its Phonology, Morphology, Syntax and Grammar are not enough. What is important is whether a given language has specialized technical vocabulary to express specific concepts/ideas i.e. the "complexity of semantics" involved. These are usually context/culture dependent.

As an example, compare the language of the Xhosa people living in equatorial Africa with that of the Chukchi people living in the Arctic Circle. It should be obvious that they each have concepts expressed via language unique to their Geography/Culture and which are unknown to the other.

As another example, consider the Sanskrit word Karma (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karma). It is impossible to understand this word in all its connotations (it actually is a stand-in for a whole lot of concepts) without having an idea of Reincarnation which is specific to Hinduism/Buddhism philosophical worldviews.

[idiotsecant]

Frankly, you are not qualified to make the claims you're making. You're not a linguist; you're just some guy. Not all opinions are equal.

[popalchemist]

Not all opinions must be taken on authority, they can be assessed on their internal coherence. The views he is putting forth are coherent and he has cited sources in a very precise manner. We can infer that he knows what he is talking about (spoiler: he does, as these are the same ideas I was referring to in my original comment).

[rramadass]

Huh? It seems like i have showed up your ignorance on this subject and hence you are just trying to "appeal to authority" which is funny given that you have actually not mentioned any one Authority nor any papers/books in support of your argument.

I have studied Linguistics from the pov of Philosophy which any intelligent person should be able to infer from my references.

I don't think you even understand what the phrase "All languages are equally expressive" means. It means very different things when applied to Natural Languages vs. Formal Languages. The latter is where this expression is usually used/studied which is what you are parroting without any understanding.

For your edification, i highly recommend reading about the well-studied Pirahã language - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirah%C3%A3_language Note in particular the reference papers/books by Daniel Everett on the Pirahã - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Everett

[Edman274]

Are there any languages in existence that lack a facility for counting numbers, to your knowledge?

[rramadass]

"idiotsecant" is clueless but according to Daniel Everett's studies/research the Pirahã language lacks a proper numeral system - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirah%C3%A3_language#Numerals_...

[popalchemist]

Thank you. Exactly the frame of reference I was speaking from.

[rramadass]

See also the psychologist Richard Nisbett's (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_E._Nisbett) works specifically;

The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently...and Why - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Geography_of_Thought

[incr_me]

Ever read Plato?

[popalchemist]

Indeed but we have veered far from Plato's school of thought ever since the dualism of Descartes and it was further reinforced by the rise in materialism following the "death of god" and the discovery of the atom.

[incr_me]

I hear you on that, but it's not like Laozi's thought is particularly useful to Chinese capitalism, either. Certainly any remnant gestures towards the dialectics of Marx by the CCP are farcical. We can allow for some local variance, of course, while still seeing the vulgarization of the whole world, so to speak. I think it's important to appreciate that the seed of dialectical thought can never be vanquished; Kant accidentally paved the way for Hegel's abolition of Cartesian dualism, and Hegel had no problem making use of the German language, so seemingly divorced from Plato's Greek, to do that. Dialectical thought can't help but appear over and over again, no matter the language, because all language is a product of the real world.

Again, it would be a mistake to not afford some degree of autonomy to language. The question is to what degree language is free to structure the world. Ultimately any language, I believe, can be expanded to express whatever new ideas arise in society, so that it is the real conditions that have ultimate power "in the last instance".

[popalchemist]

I afford that "autonomy" (in the sense of a sponptaneous emergence of phenomena, not in the sense of having agency); nevertheless, thousands of years of culture going one way here and another way there lend themselves to pre-built apparati of perception. See other comments in this thread for a more articulated explanation of what I mean; I don't have the time to re-express it here.