Lecture 11 - Language and thought

Question 1

What is the Sapir Whorf Hypothesis?

Answer 1

• Linguistic relativism: linguistic differences mirrored by nonlinguistic differences e.g eskimos have 7 words for snow as snow is important in their language, so concept is represented heavily in the environment.
• Some languages have things that are very hard to translate because some cultures do not have that concept.
• Linguistic determinism: people think differently because of differences in language (perception of world is different)

Question 2

What should linguistic relativity not be?

Answer 2

• Ethnocentric
• Assume the world is carved up in the way reflected by language

Question 3

What is Linguistic determinism?

Answer 3

• We think in a particular way because of our language: unable to consider new ideas
• Whorf claim: language of the Hopi has no expressions for time e.g no tenses

Question 4

How do look at linguistic determinism experimentally?

Answer 4

• Languages have a different numbers of colour terms e.g greek has no diff between blue/black, do colour names determine perception of colour
• Dani tribe have two colour terms: light/dark
• Gave recognition task for colour chips using non/focal colours (prototypical vs not)

Question 5

Results:

Answer 5

• Dani perform better on focal colours
• Distinguish between colours within a colour category
• Colour perception NOT determined by colour terms in language

Question 6

What did Kay & Kempton do?

Answer 6

• Asking if language influences how easy it is to distinguish colours (soft determinism)
• Presented ppts with 3 diff colour chips, asked which one was odd/which two are most similar
• Asked English and Tarahumara speakers (do not distinguish between blue/green)

Question 7

What were the results (Key&Kempton)

Answer 7

• English speakers chose most extreme when triplets were single colour name
• More likely to pick the different colour when chips were across colour name boundaries
• Colour names influence their perceptual choice
• T pick most extreme for ALL types of triplet
• Absence of categories affected perception
• Supports soft determinism: language influences thoughts, colour names influenced colour perception

Question 8

What is the Turing test?

Answer 8

• Thought experiment: if something is conscious/not
• A machine in one room that answers qs by an interrogator, human in another room answering qs by interrogator
• Third room where interrogator engages in teletyped convo with contestants with judges.
• If machine tricks judges that it is human, then it has passed the Turing test

Question 9

How can you debate that computers can think?

Answer 9

• Computers are programmed, so are humans via DNA and evolution
• Computers are not creative, cannot surprise us. Computers can write poems and make music/art
• Computers cannot have emotions, are emotions necessary for thought? What are emotions and why can’t computers have them?
• Computers cannot learn: they can be programmed to learn
• They do not have a brain

Question 10

What is the Chinese Room argument?

Answer 10

• Passing Turing test does not mean thinking
• Using language does not mean being conscious
• As they do not understand
• Understanding = consciousness