dominic ([info]subtlegray) wrote,
@ 2009-06-14 22:02:00
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Current location:Earth
Current mood: working
Current music:It's all over now baby blue
Entry tags:lera boroditsky, sapir-whorf hypothesis, yasunari kawabata

Words
The Zen disciple sits for long hours silent and motionless, with his eyes closed. Presently he enters a state of impassivity, free from all ideas and all thoughts. He departs from the self and enters the realm of nothingness. This is not the nothingness or the emptiness of the West. It is rather the reverse, a universe of the spirit in which everything communicates freely with everything, transcending bounds, limitless. ... The disciple must, however, always be lord of his own thoughts, and must attain enlightenment through his own efforts. And the emphasis is less upon reason and argument than upon intuition, immediate feeling. Enlightenment comes not from teaching but through the eye awakened inwardly. Truth is in "the discarding of words", it lies "outside words". -Yasunari Kawabata

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/boroditsky09/boroditsky09_index.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapir-Whorf_hypothesis




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[info]blue_aardvark
2009-06-15 01:13 pm UTC (link)
I'm skeptical of this argument, that people think differently based on language (or culture, or religion, or ethnicity). It has been put to evil purpose in the past.

For example, many in the West that Islam is an inherently violent religion, or to put it another way, that Islam makes its adherents violent. But is it their religion that accounts for their perceptions, or their experiences? For example, is Iran skeptical of the West because they think differently (and hence wrongly), or because their experiences (CIA overthrow of their democratically elected government; US support of Iraq during Iran/Iraq War; being surrounded by US forces and threatened by Israeli nuclear arsenal) have led them to hold different beliefs?

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