questions for the group:
If the only language you know does not have a word for the color gray, do you think you will see the color gray? Will you see it as gray in the same way as someone whose language does have a word for that color and who has seen that color labeled as such? Or will it look different to a person who doesn't have a word for it than it does to a person who has a word for it and has seen the color with that label? Will it look more green or blue to someone whose language has a word for green or blue but not gray?
[snip]
I don't know about colors, but I do know from personal experience that if your language does not include any words like "transcendental world-constitution", you -- I mean myself as a young person -- will not know that you -- I mean myself as a young person -- are a judge of the world and not just an entity in the world to be judged according to the existing criteria of judgment in your -- I mean my own as a young person -- ambient social surround, e.g., that you "should" do good on the test the teacher gives you and if you don't do good, it is obvious that your hope of having a life as a professional is pretty negligible. Apples fall and students get graded. It's just the way things are -- but even that doesn't capture the taken-for-grantedness of it all, since being graded is like the apples falling: It didn't take Newton for people to "know" that apples fall (and students get graded).
As I say, I don't know about colors, although I've read that Europeans before ca. 1800 did not see purple (or whateever similar color did not have a word). Poor deprived souls they must have been compared to me, whose social milieu of origin did have that word!
\brad mccormick
--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----------------------------------------------------------------- Visit my website ==> http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/
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