Re: something i found interesting...

On Thu, 31 Aug 2000, Cathy Whitlock wrote:

> I was working on something for my ToK (Theory of Knowledge) class, and came
> across something relating to languages in general:
ToK!  Are you doing IB?  I got my diploma 3 years ago.  :-)

> "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?"
>
> And our next discussion will be on what would theoretically happen if a baby
> grew up without being exposed to a langauge and what the baby would do, etc.,
> and what role the devcelopement of language holds on human developement and
> evolution. Its all very interesting! Also, how one's native tongue can affect
> the way one sees the world and personal philosophies.
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.  :-(

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"?

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.

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