Thursday, March 5, 2009
Which came first, language or perception?
The title of this post is intended to be a play on the old philosophical question, Which came first - the chicken or the egg? CLICK HERE to go to the New York Times article, "When language can hold the answer," discussing research findings on the role language may play in sense perception, including things as basic as recognizing colors. Use the article as a prompt to reflect on the relationship between these two Ways of Knowing.
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7 comments:
I think that, especially after reading the article, the 2 ways of knowing known as Language and Perception are complementary to each other, but at the same time not dependent on each other. I think this because in the article it said that many times a person's language would enhance their perception of the objects put in front of them, but that the people did not NEED the language to perceive the objects. This means, to me, that language is not necessary, but it is usually helpful. Following that logic, I would think that perception came before logic and was then enhanced by language.
I think the start of language is how people began to create different perceptions. Without language, we would all see everything without creating any observations or opinions. It is when we communicate with others that we began to form our own perceptions of how things should be. If someone who does not speak any language stares at a cloud they will not automatically assume that the cloud looks like an elephant, they would just see a white blur in the sky. If, on the other hand, I asked someone who does use language to communicate, what animal they think that cloud looks like, they would have a thier own random version of what animal it is. Language is what sparks the mind to percieve things in its own way.
I think that perception was there before knowledge. The trials in the article do nothing to prove that language came first, all they do is support the claim the language can help perception along, or sharpen it. Some of the trials clearly have the conclusion that people without language can still perceive, just maybe with more difficulty.
I think that there is a very important relationship between language and sense perception. Until reading this article, I did not think about or realize how these two ways of knowing are so closely linked. One cannot function to its full effect without an influence from the other. When it comes to the issue of “which came first, the chicken or the egg?” in relation to language and sense perception, I think that it is almost exactly the same issue and there is no real proof or distinction to tell which one came first. The more important thing is the issue of using these ways of knowing to the best of our ability to be able to gain knowledge from them.
I had never really given much thought to how colors are the perfect example of displaying the relationship between these two subjects. They go hand-in-hand with each other because if there was only sense perception, you would not be able to describe the color and distinguish it very well. And if there was only language, then you could not see the color but only talk about it, which would create everyone to have different ideas of the color since words do not mean the same to each person and are interpreted differently. This shows that there has to be both ways of knowing for the color to be seen and described to the best ability.
Things in everyday life make much more sense and are easier to learn or gain knowledge from when both language and sense perception team up together. It makes things much clearer and easier to understand when showing and describing something to someone. One issue with this though is the language barriers within different cultures. This, as the article explained, can make it hard to get the same understanding of things and can be interpreted, described, or seen differently.
I believe that perception came first, as we likely had our senses, which allow us to view, experience, and essentially “perceive” the world long before we decided to come up with the system of sounds that we now call a language. We can still easily perceive things in multiple different ways without the help of language. And language would not affect how, nor the way that we perceived things. The actual matter of the things that we label, the material and appearance of the objects would stay constant, would continue naturally as they were and should change without any concern to how we think it should be and especially despite what title or name we gave to it. Red would still be red even if we called it green or even blurpleberry-cement. An rose would still be a rose, it wouldn’t change its shape and color entirely just because we decided to give it another name.
However, without language we would not be able to describe nor categorize the things that we see/hear/feel/ect. very easily; which is also an idea that is stated in the article itself “the group using labels learned much faster. Naming, Dr. Lupyan concluded, helps to create mental categories.” Grouping a massive and chaotic array of objects together into one pile would be very confusing and not as easy to see relationships through. So language helps a person understand what they are perceiving much more easily. However, “language is not always helpful. For the most part, it enhances thinking. But it can trip us up, too.” And with language, and depending on the type/form of the language used, it would change the difficulty rating with which a person thinks through a problem, or thinks through the sights that he has seen. With too complex a grouping of categories, it actually makes it much more difficult for a person to understand what he is perceiving; and as stated earlier, language has been shown to help with the understanding of perception, but does not seem to have been the root of perception in any of the cases shown or discussed.
I think that it is interesting how intertwined language and sense perception are. Before reading this article I assumed that perception always comes first with language following after as a way to communicate what has been perceived. I did not even realize that past linguistic experience could effect our initial perceptions of reality.
Looking back, this makes sense because language provides a way for people to categorize what they see. The perceptions can be shaped however as they are divided into different categories by different people.
This metaphor is a stretch, but it reminds me of when I see a pair of identical twins from a different family. To me they are the same because my past experience has not given me the tools to differentiate between the two of them. I can look at one and then the other, and they are the same to me. Yet someone with past experience with the family would see two completely different people because they have categorized the slight differences that exist between the two of them. This is like the relationship between percepion and language; we can often perceive differences, but unless we are equipped with the language to differentiate these perceptions they seem the same to us.
It's true that language is helpful in our perception but i feel this is more to do with the way we think things not in how we perceive them.For example if you knew that you left your Ipod behind the couch then you would tell yourself "I left it behind the couch". But if you lacked any sort of language you would only think of the couch and behind it.You would not be able to name exact areas like the back right but only see images of a space. Language does not help or hinder what we perceive but allows us to categorize what we perceive so we can more easily define or remember it.
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