Monday, October 14, 2013
Is Seeing Believing?
Belief, a concept that varies from every individual's opinion. The world is covered with lots of different beliefs, from religion to personal beliefs. However what we believe in mostly relies on what we see or what we don't see. Religions such as, Christianity, Judaism and Islam believe in the 'God' we never see. Why is that? For example, if I will tell a random person that I have 10 million dollars in my bank account, as much as it is not realistic it does not differ from the concept of religion and believing in someone that creates miracles. Us, human mostly don't believe in things that are not in the range of our imagination, however we never stopped believing in god. Of course that there are people who do not believe in god however, many industries are relied and based on that amazing thing we have never seen. So in order to believe in something, we have to sort of jump from the conscious we have to a complete belief otherwise we would have stayed hanged up in the air, which in reality happens to most of us. On the other hand, optical illusions can make us believe in something that does not exit at all, which brings me to a conclusion the seeing and believing do not rely on each other. Therefore, in order to really believe in something all that is required is just to make up a decision on whether we believe in that thing or not even if we don't see, but if most people are like me it is really difficult to take that decision to decide.
Saturday, October 5, 2013
identifying the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and its limits!
“Languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey.”
Around 7 billion people live on the planet currently and we all speak different languages. Whorf claims that the languages we speak differ by the way they clearly convey different concepts and not by our different interpretations of this concepts. He believes that by the way each language is structured affects our perception on the world and the environment and also the apprehension we have on various concepts. For example, if we let people who speak different languages, give voices to things such as 'bed' or 'fork' the tone we will give to the object will mostly depend on whether this object is masculine or feminine in our language.
Moreover he remarks that in some languages the use of specifying directions rely on north, south, east, west instead of left, right, in front of and behind. He believes that even though a person might not be able to know the means of right or left and so more, it does not necessarily require that they may not understand its concept.
In addition, Sapir-Whord hypothesis is divided into both the linguistic determinism and linguistic relatively. He states that the linguistic determinist basically determines our thoughts and how one is perceived his or her reality depending on their mother tongue and linguistic relatively obeys the idea of the variation of views we have on different perceptions on concepts due to our mother tongue language.
Another great example that made me really wonder on how different people experience the world affected by their mother tongue is the example of if a two different people that speak different concepts of maintaining directions would enter a hotel and both of their rooms would look exactly the same from left to right the only difference would be that they are placed in front of each other, the person who uses the concepts of left and right would not be able to think of any differences of the placement of the objects whereas on the other hand all the concept of directions and placement of north, south east and west would fully reverse a person's way of thinking.
Around 7 billion people live on the planet currently and we all speak different languages. Whorf claims that the languages we speak differ by the way they clearly convey different concepts and not by our different interpretations of this concepts. He believes that by the way each language is structured affects our perception on the world and the environment and also the apprehension we have on various concepts. For example, if we let people who speak different languages, give voices to things such as 'bed' or 'fork' the tone we will give to the object will mostly depend on whether this object is masculine or feminine in our language.
Moreover he remarks that in some languages the use of specifying directions rely on north, south, east, west instead of left, right, in front of and behind. He believes that even though a person might not be able to know the means of right or left and so more, it does not necessarily require that they may not understand its concept.
In addition, Sapir-Whord hypothesis is divided into both the linguistic determinism and linguistic relatively. He states that the linguistic determinist basically determines our thoughts and how one is perceived his or her reality depending on their mother tongue and linguistic relatively obeys the idea of the variation of views we have on different perceptions on concepts due to our mother tongue language.
Another great example that made me really wonder on how different people experience the world affected by their mother tongue is the example of if a two different people that speak different concepts of maintaining directions would enter a hotel and both of their rooms would look exactly the same from left to right the only difference would be that they are placed in front of each other, the person who uses the concepts of left and right would not be able to think of any differences of the placement of the objects whereas on the other hand all the concept of directions and placement of north, south east and west would fully reverse a person's way of thinking.
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