Re: OT: Helen Keller & Whorf-Sapir

I think I had this going in my earlier post, but I
guess not. I'm aware that thought processes can work
in a logical deductive fashion, as in symbolic
manipulation, and that this is seperate from sensory
thought. Since deduction does not apply well to
language (due to nebulous definitions, deep meanings,
etc), my hypothesis was that people who profess to
think in language are actually thinking in terms of
deduction, perhaps with a bit of sensory mixed in. The
difference is, they are doing a really sucky job of it
(by that I mean the logic gets very sloppy very fast
because of language's sloppy logical structure-- this
applies both to deduction and induction [which as of
writing this I believe, but am not fully convinced, is
a separate thought process than deduction]).

On that note, am I alone when I say that reading some
"Great Masters" of philosophy gets me incredibly
pissed off at what seems to me to be an incredibly
superfluous use of language to describe relatively
simple and, to an extent, reasonable concepts? I mean,
I loved what I read of Merleau-Ponty (Phenomenology of
Perception)--he had great ideas, once I could get
through the horrific wall of words in the translation.
I have an idea that the French version may be more
condensed, but I don't think my French skills are such
that I could read a philosophy book to any good
effect.

Finally, regarding Helen Keller. From what I recall
(note: what I recall is extremely unreliable) she had
spoken a couple words, but had not yet extracted the
concept that a word could be a symbol representing a
real, sensory object (hmmm, language=sensory thought
connections?). Of course in "Miracle Worker," the
climactic scene occurs when Helen, after doing a lot
of work learning to sign words ("It's just a game to
her") suddenly, "eyes widening," starts yelling
"wa-wa!" as she's feeling running water with her hand.
So based on that (again, unreliable) it seems that the
actual kajigger of "language"--that is, associating a
sound or sign with a the physical world, was not
triggered yet, even though she was able to "speak."

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Samuel Rivier
SamuelRiv@yahoo.com

Case Western Reserve University
Undergraduate - Department of Fizzacks
x1743


	
		
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