komponisto comments on The Design Space of Minds-In-General - Less Wrong

19 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 25 June 2008 06:37AM

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Comment author: komponisto 21 January 2011 11:06:19PM 0 points [-]

I can simultaneously agree that language can influence thought and that speaking different languages has little influence on thought. This is because I think most of the time other factors, culture being the most obvious one, screens off language as an explanation for differing thought patterns among people who speak different languages. This simply means that the seeming influence of language on thought is actually the influence of culture on thought, and in turn of thought on language, and then of language on thought again.

(...)

If you somehow managed to change the language a person speaks without changing anything else, you will not see a systematic effect on his thought patterns. This is because he would soon adapt the language for his use, based on his existent thoughts (most of which are not even remotely determined by language). The effect of language on thought is an illusion, it is actually his/his culture's other thoughts giving rise to the language which seem to then independently have an effect on his thought.

The phenomenon of language influencing thought, is more helpfully thought of as thought influencing thought.

Excellently put. The view you express here coincides exactly with mine.