Re: something i found interesting...

In a message dated 8/31/2000 7:42:01 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
yl112@CORNELL.EDU writes:


 ToK!  Are you doing IB?  I got my diploma 3 years ago.  :-)

YES! I am in IB hehe, fun fun!

 > "Language has an imporant effect on the way we experience the world. Most
of
 > our knowledge comes to us linguistically encoded. This immediately raises
the
 > question of the relationship between language and the world. Does language
 > passively describe the way the world is, or does it actively structure our
 > experience?... Can we know something we can't put into words?"

 <<<Hmm.  Can we know something we can't put into words?  I know I've had the
 *sensation* of knowing something that then took me several minutes, or
 even several hours (...the latter more often with math proofs), to
 articulate in words.  I'd tentatively say yes, but that's just from my
 own feelings, not anything rigorous.  :-( >>>


Its an interesting paradox- how would human beings have developed if we never
invented a language? would we still be grunting and pointing to things
because of the lack of words to describe them, or would we have evolved a
higher form of communication?

<<< This also depends, I suppose, on how you define "knowledge."  If I know
 how to play a piece on the piano (I have some 50 memorized, though I'm
 out of practice), does a verbal description suffice to encapsulate that
 knowledge?  Would you count musical transcription as "words"?>>>

Personally- yes, I would count musical transcription as words- music can be a
language of its own, most definitely! I think it seriously rivals math as the
international language, but, then again, I'm not exactly a math fan!

 <<<I'm going to stop before I get myself into trouble, because I'm
 absolutely lousy at philosophy.  I'm better at asking questions than
 attempting to answer them in any coherent fashion.>>>

You're in good company- Socrates considered himself better at the questions
than the answers!

<<< On a related note, sometimes I know perfectly well what something means
 in Korean but can't figure out how to translate it into English (the
 reverse problem doesn't bother me as much since my Korean vocabulary is
 much less extensive than my English vocabulary).

 YHL >>>

I know exactly what you mean- even though English is my first language,
oftentimes its easier to find a word in Spanish to use in particular
situations, and translating can be difficult! Though as far as the
translating thing goes, its usually easier for me to translate Spanish to
English than vice versa. Rather odd I suppose! At least in Miami nearly
everyone speaks Spanish and/or English in most cases, and "Spanglish" is a
commonly accepted form of communication. I think this Miami version of
Spanglish has the makings for an interesting pidgin someday, for you pidgin
fans. (Z!) I definitely think that being fluent in more than one language
makes it easier to think, you can draw on more than your primary language in
your thoughts in order to fully explain that feeling of knowing what you
yourself mean but may not be apparent to others until you can sufficiently
explain it to them! On a side note, was Korean your foriegn language for your
IB exams?