"Expression and thought are one and the same thing" (Peirce).
The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
The two versions
It has always been known that there is a close relationship between the language spoken by a person and his or her thinking, between external language and internal mental processes. The nature of this relationship between language and thought has been a recurrent and controversial topic throughout history, from the time of ancient cultures to the present day.
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (SWH), by linguists Edward Sapir and his student Benjamin Lee Whorf, has two versions:
The strong version.
It affirms that language totally determines thought. It is the so-called "linguistic determinism". Mental functions are determined by the nature of spoken language. Language is a mold by means of which the patterns or categories of thought are formed. Linguistic categories determine cognitive categories.
The weak version.
It asserts that language influences or affects thought. It is the so-called "linguistic relativism". Language contributes to shape a style of thought, a certain vision of the world.
Today, the strong version of SWH is practically discredited, with a broad consensus in favor of the weak version (language influences thinking). But researchers do not agree on the mechanisms or modes of this influence. Linguistic relativism is a multidisciplinary issue, involving psychologists, linguists, philosophers, anthropologists, neurologists and pedagogues.
Genesis of the hypothesis
Sapir defended the weak version. Whorf, who went deeper into this subject, is considered to be the main proponent of the hypothesis, also in its weak version (the principle of linguistic relativity). Died prematurely, his ideas were published posthumously in 1956 in a volume entitled "Language, Thought and Reality" [1999].
One of Sapir's students (Harry Hoijer) was the first to use the term "Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis" about this idea of the influence of language on thought.
Roger Brown and Eric Lenneberg formalized Sapir and Whorf's ideas as:
"The world is experienced and conceived differently in different linguistic communities."
"Language causes a particular cognitive structure."
These two ideas were further developed by Brown in the so-called weak and strong versions, respectively (language affects thought and language determines thought). These two formulations by Brown were disseminated and attributed to Sapir and Whorf, although they were not realized by either of them.
Language as paradigm
Although the term "paradigm" was not used in the time of Sapir and Whorf, today we can use this term, for the weak version of SWH can be expressed as that every language is a paradigm, a certain worldview, which is reflected in the culture of the speakers of that language, and the language in the culture. There is currently a renewed interest in this topic due to the advances made in recent years in cognitive psychology and anthropological linguistics, together with the rise, diffusion and widespread application of the concept of paradigm, a concept essentially linked to relativism.
Wilhelm von Humboldt, an outstanding representative of the German romantic tradition, in his essay "On the Comparative Study of Languages", defended linguistic determinism:
Each language encapsulates a particular Weltansicht or Weltanschaun: a worldview, the reflection of the spirit of a nation. "The diversity of languages is not a diversity of sounds and signs, but a diversity of worldviews."
Every language is restrictive. "Every language sets certain limits to the spirit in those who speak it, assumes a certain direction and, in so doing, excludes many others."
Language and thought are inseparable. Language completely determines thought. "The force that generates language is indistinguishable from the and the force that generates thought."
According to the German Romantic tradition, there are natural languages superior to others. That is to say, there are primitive languages that keep their speakers in cultural and intellectual poverty, because of their poor or reduced vision of the world. For William Dwight Whitney (American philologist, linguist and orientalist), to "civilize" the savages was to teach them a "superior" language such as English.
Franz Boas, founder of anthropology in the U.S. and Sapir's teacher, who was born and educated in Germany, had contact with the German Romantic tradition, and is supposed to have transmitted these ideas to Sapir. Boas, studying Native American languages, came to the conclusion that indeed the culture and way of life of a people were reflected in their language. But he challenged Whitney's view and that of the German Romantics by asserting that there were no such primitive languages, for all languages were capable of expressing the same contents in different ways.
Sapir's view is as follows:
Languages hold the keys to understanding the worldviews of different cultures. Each language represents a worldview. "No two languages are sufficiently similar to be considered to represent the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels assigned to it." Hence the difficulty of translating accurately between two different languages because of their different conceptions of reality.
Each language is a tool of thought, a complete system of expression, with its own unique structure. This structure is made up of predetermined paths that must necessarily be followed by speakers and from which there is no possible escape. This linguistic structure affects their thought patterns.
He rejects, like Boas, the strong connection attributed by the German Romantics between language and culture. He accepts only the influence of language on habitual patterns of thought. There are connections between language and culture, though not correlations. "I cannot believe that culture and language are in every sense causally related. Culture can be defined as what a society thinks and does. Language is a particular how."
In some respects, some languages are better than others, but not absolutely. For example, some languages have a better grammatical apparatus than others for expressing particular ideas. From this point of view, all languages are similar.
An outstanding feature of all natural languages is formal completeness: the ability of any language to express any idea. Formal completeness is fulfilled by all languages (whether from primitive or evolved cultures) and is a property of the grammatical structure and not of the lexical resources of the language. This grammatical structure potentially contains all possible expressions.
No language is totally logical, for all languages emerge from more or less disordered experience. Language is like a natural organism that should not be tampered with, like a tree that grows without human care, and whose growth can be altered if interfered with.
Because they are not perfectly logical, languages can produce distortions in the world view. The best way to identify such distortions is to compare the forms of expression in different languages to detect points of discordance.
And Whorf's view:
Culture and language are interrelated, reflecting each other. They are like two inseparable sides of the same coin. It is an interactive process with causal interdependence, like the eternal chicken-and-egg question.
The problem of thinking is not only a psychological problem, but rather a cultural problem closely linked to language.
Language is a first form of approach to reality, a generic interpretation of reality, which is then detailed and particularized by science (or scientific language). "Language does in a cruder but also broader and more versatile way, the same thing that science does." "The worldview of modern science arises from a superior specialization of the basic grammar of Western Indo-European languages."
There are mental processes that transcend and are prior to thought: an "experience more basic than language."
The categories and distinctions of each language contain a way of perceiving, analyzing and acting in the world.
Linguistics is fundamental to the theory of thought and, in the last analysis, of all human sciences.
Influenced by Einstein's theory of relativity, he called linguistic relativity the "new principle of relativity". He never mentioned the word "hypothesis". The concept of principle is obviously superior to that of hypothesis. A principle is like an axiom, something that is considered self-evident, that does not require demonstration and that constitutes the foundation of a theory.
Whorf studied physics and wrote an unpublished paper on gravitation. He was one of the few interdisciplinary thinkers between physics and linguistics.
SWH and Artificial Languages
Although SWH refers to the dialectic between thought and natural language, it can and should also be applied to the subject of artificial languages, mainly computer languages (in mathematics there is no formal language), and international auxiliary languages, and ask whether they affect or determine thought.
If language constrains thought, an artificial language that could eliminate (or minimize as much as possible) these constraints, that was perfectly regular, logical, formally complete, and powerfully expressive, would produce some important effects on the users or speakers of this language:
It would free them from the old linguistic chains.
By learning and using it, they would improve their intelligence and creativity.
It would clarify their thinking, by using logical, regular and unambiguous language.
It would increase their level of awareness.
It would improve their culture.
It could be used for human communication (as an international auxiliary language), for human-machine communication and for machine-to-machine communication.
It could be used as an intermediate language (interlingua) in machine translation processes between natural languages.
SWH and computer languages
In computer languages, especially general-purpose programming languages, being perfectly defined and formally closed, the language absolutely conditions the programmer's thinking, since it imposes on him a certain vision of the world, that is, it forces him to think in terms of a certain paradigm, of a model of thought. Therefore, the strong version of SWH undoubtedly prevails here.
Dijkstra claimed that "It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to students who have had previous exposure to BASIC; as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated with no hope of recovery." "The use of Cobol mutilates the mind; teaching it, therefore, should be considered a criminal offense." This means that Dijkstra goes beyond the strong version of SWH, as simple programming languages (such as Basic or Cobol) not only determine thinking, but are harmful to the mind.
Dijkstra is the originator of the so-called "structured programming". In an article, considered a classic, published in 1968, entitled "Go To Programming Considered Harmful", he argued that programming done with bifurcations (goto's), was harmful because it was a chaotic programming, close or equivalent to machine language, with a low level of abstraction. It proposed a higher level of abstraction, using only three generic control structures: sequence, selection (if-then-else) and loop (while).
Kenneth E. Iverson, creator of the APL language, implicitly believed in the weak version of SWH, for he held that a computer language affected thinking. In his 1979 Turing Award lecture, "Notation as a tool of thought", he argued that more powerful notations facilitated thinking and algorithm development on the computer.
For Steve McConnell, author of "Code Complete" −a practical programming book, considered a classic−, programming languages determine how thoughts are expressed, and may even determine what thoughts can be expressed.
But a programming language can be enlightening, rather than restrictive or harmful. For example, for Eric Steven Raymond −author of "How to Become a Hacker" and "The New hacker's Dictionary"− Lisp is a language worth learning, even if you will never use it, because it constitutes a "profoundly enlightening experience" and because that experience "will make you a better programmer for the rest of your days."
The essence of a programming language lies in the set of semantic primitives chosen as the core of the language. These primitives play the role of axioms. The rest of the language are elements derived from these primitive elements and their combinatorial grammar. Hence the importance of selecting the primitive elements as generators of distortion or illumination. In order to achieve the simplest possible unifying consciousness, the ideal is that the primitives themselves are also the grammar, i.e., that the lexical grammar is the same as the structural grammar.
The semantic gap
In computer science, especially in programming, this term is often used to refer to the distance, separation or difference between human thought and the semantic model of the language (of higher or lower level) used.
The level of abstraction of a language has an inverse relationship with the semantic gap. The lower the level of abstraction of a language, the greater the semantic gap. And the higher the level of abstraction, the smaller the semantic gap, the greater its expressive power and creativity.
The Blub paradox
It is a paradox posed by Paul Graham, Lisp programmer and essayist, in the article entitled "Beating the Average", in which he indirectly refers to SWH:
It assumes a hierarchy of programming languages ordered from lowest (bottom) to highest (top) level of abstraction. The lowest level would be an assembly language. The highest level, the one at the top of the scale, for Graham is Lisp, which justifies it because any language considered innovative can be implemented in Lisp. For Graham, Lisp is the best language for building languages (or Common Lisp, in its standardized version).
Blub is a hypothetical language located halfway between both poles.
The paradox is the following: A programmer using a language like Blub, if he looks down, when he observes an inferior language, misses some feature x, which he considers fundamental and to which he was used to, so he deduces that the language is inferior because it requires additional effort to implement that feature. And if he looks upwards (towards higher level languages) all he sees are strange and complex languages, features he has never conceived of or missed. When a programmer uses that particular language (Blub) it imposes on him a certain way of thinking, to which he ends up adapting and limiting or determining his thinking.
This paradox has been criticized in several ways:
It is not possible to order languages hierarchically by their level of abstraction because languages have different characteristics, with different degrees of abstraction, and different ways of considering semantic resources.
There is no absolute classification of languages. Depending on the problem being addressed, one language will be more appropriate than another.
The fact that a certain characteristic x is not detected does not imply that the language is inferior.
It is questioned that Lisp is the language with the highest level of abstraction that exists. In addition Graham has developed a new language, a dialect of Lisp called "Arc", which suggests that Lisp is not the supreme and ideal language.
However, this paradox has a high symbolic-metaphorical value:
Blub symbolizes the level of consciousness associated with the language, and also that of the programmer.
Any language can be Blub, that is, a language that traps you and prevents you from seeing beyond, that is, prevents you from seeing that there are superior languages. Sometimes the term "Blub" is used to indicate a programming language that uncompromising programmers consider that they have chosen the best possible programming language. And "Blub programmers" are also called "Blub programmers who have been captured by a language and adamantly reject any change.
When the programmer looks down, he misses features that he has assumed from his level of consciousness.
When he looks up he does not understand what he sees because, from his level, he does not conceive of a higher level of consciousness or higher dimensions because his consciousness is limited to the world he "inhabits". The programmer Blub has been "captured" or encapsulated in a certain vision of the world. An analogy can be drawn with Flatland, the 1884 satirical novel written by Edwin Abbott. Flatland is an imaginary two-dimensional world inhabited by beings who cannot conceive of the third dimension.
Obviously, this theme is general. For example, at the level of operating systems, much of humanity is "trapped" by the Windows paradigm or world. And at the human level all of us are trapped by our level of consciousness. We live in a metaphorical Flatland, as we are unable to perceive the higher dimensions of reality.
SWH and international auxiliary languages
The SWH was influential in the development and standardization of Interlingua, an international auxiliary language, one of the best known and most widespread after Esperanto. Sapir was one of the leading linguists involved in the development of Interlingua in the IALA (International Auxiliary Language Association), an association created by the patron Alice Morris in 1924. He was involved in this association from its foundation until his death in 1939.
The IALA recruited several specialists. In addition to Sapir, there were C.K. Ogden and Otto Jespersen. Ogden had his own project (BASIC English; BASIC stands for British American Scientific International Commertial. And Jespersen, linked to Ido (an improved version of Esperanto), also had his own project (NOVIAL, from Nov=new and IAL= International Auxiliary Language). Initially, the IALA was dedicated to examining the different existing projects, with the idea of selecting and promoting one of them. In the end, it was decided to develop a new language: Interlingua, which was formally introduced in 1951. [see Appendix - Interlingua].
On the subject of the creation of an international auxiliary language we can highlight the following aspects:
Relativity vs. Universality.
This is the key issue. Sapir advocated linguistic relativity (language as worldview). What should be the worldview corresponding to an artificial language for international communication? It is supposed to imply an absolute, objective and universal worldview, a single worldview for all. Sapir argued that the international auxiliary language should develop the lexical means to express the common culture of the international community.
Structure.
The linguists involved in the construction of an international auxiliary language intended to build it with a logical structure and also to facilitate logical thinking.
In 1931, Alice Morris commented that the perfect international auxiliary language "... is undoubtedly not an ideal that can never be attained, but ideals do not mean that they have to be attained; they merely indicate the direction of movement".
For Sapir, an international auxiliary language should be not only simple, regular and logical, but also rich and creative. A simple, regular and logical language will be easier to learn than any national language, which contains a number of irregular and illogical forms and requires a great deal of effort to master.
The requirement of "simple, regular and logical" was difficult to reconcile with linguistic relativity. In the end he became convinced that it was not possible to construct any fully logical international auxiliary language, just as is the case with natural languages. For Sapir, the true nature of logic and the objective world were totally elusive, as they were poorly understood to be implemented at a practical level. In the end he advocated that the auxiliary language should be designed to conform as closely as possible to existing patterns of thought, attempting to discover the common structures underlying Western languages through comparative linguistics.
Alice Morris described the research work towards this association as a movement towards the discovery of the grammar of thought. This grammar was supposed to be universal, but Sapir was skeptical in this regard; he considered it a futile task to try to discover it.
International vs. national.
Sapir was a strong supporter of the internationalist movement, opposed to nationalism and particular cultures. He believed in the need to eliminate national language barriers in order to facilitate international contacts, especially commercial and scientific ones. He opposed any project that promoted an existing national language, even in modified form, as it favored the interests of native speakers, and other nations would see it as an imposition. He opposed Ogden's BASIC English, as it was a simplified form of English. The international auxiliary language should be only a second language for all, without discarding any natural language.
A Model of Thought-Language Relationship
The Thought-Language Dialectic
Between thought and language there is a particular dialectical relationship, which is a reflection of the universal and archetypal dialectical relationship between the two modes of consciousness: that of the right hemisphere (RH) and the left hemisphere (LH) of the brain. In such a way that we can associate thought to the HD (to the deep, to semantics, to the depth, to the continuous, to the abstract) and language to the HI (to the superficial, to syntax, to form, to the discrete, to the concrete).
Linguistic relativity (weak SWH)
Language is an instrument of consciousness and thought. Language is a filter, a formalization or particularization of a thought in as logical and structured a way as possible. In linguistic perception, the reverse process occurs: communication activates the linguistic filter, before passing to the deeper level of thought.
Language is part of culture, the manifestation of a worldview. There is a language-culture interdependence.
The process of thinking begins deep within, from the absolute, from pure consciousness, a field or environment of freedom and creativity, and is manifested through language, which conditions the expression of thoughts. Consciousness is more important than thought. And thought is more potent than language. There is a hierarchy: consciousness-thought-language.
The process of thinking begins with high-level abstractions that are transformed into lower-level abstractions until a thought is produced and its expression in a concrete language.
Linguistic determinism (strong SWH)
At the level of computer language (especially, programming languages), we can indeed speak of SWH in its strong version: language absolutely determines thought.
Language as a filter
Language acts like a pair of glasses through which we view the world. Language, by its very nature, relativizes and rationalizes, filters reality to make it more intelligible, forms or shapes our mental structures with which we interact with the world. Each language is a different filter. Language is an intermediary between inner and outer reality.
Anyway, the metaphor of the filter is not accurate because it seems to indicate that it lets some thoughts pass and not others, when what happens is that thoughts are adapted, transformed, translated to be expressed or to be interpreted. In this process it can happen that the thoughts are deformed or distorted. The more natural and close to thought the language is, the lesser the distortion. In the extreme case of a very sophisticated, complex and restrictive language, the thought will have serious difficulties of expression and will be practically blocked, which can produce mental damage, because the thoughts do not flow outwards in a natural way.
The problem with natural languages is that they do not have a totally logical structure: there are irregular verbs, exceptions for plural nouns, and so on. To think is to structure the imagination in a logical way. If the language is not totally logical, this involves additional effort and strain.
The principle of downward causation
Language does not limit thought, but to the expression of thought, for the profound cannot be altered by the superficial.
Language cannot influence thought because thought is at a deeper level than language. Language is a manifestation of thought.
With the principle of downward causality the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is clarified.
Language does not influence thought because thought revolves around archetypes. External language is a manifestation of the internal. External language never influences thought, but only limits its form of expression. Language acts as a filter for the expression of our ideas. Whorf's linguistic relativity is not true.
The role of imagination
Imagination is always present when we think. It is impossible to think without imagining. Thinking is supported or grounded in imagination, and when we are spoken to and "understand" what we are told, we automatically activate imagination. Imagination can be generated internally or it can be induced externally by perception (induced imagination).
And behind imagination is consciousness: imagination is the vehicle or support of consciousness. Consciousness and imagination are on a higher plane than thought. And thought is superior to language.
The "vision of the world" is thus linked to consciousness and imagination, both faculties of the soul. Therefore, we might better speak of the "imagination of the world."
The motor of everything is imagination, for everything imagined tends to be realized, because it is on a higher level than thought.
Since thought accompanies consciousness and imagination, which have no limitations, we can deduce that thought is not limited by language. But its expression is: language limits the expression of thoughts.
Level of abstraction
There are languages more evolved than others, which are manifestations of higher consciousnesses than others. Although in natural languages this issue is not so obvious, in computer languages this issue is evident. It is not the same thing to use an assembly language (a reflection of machine language) as a language that includes high-level abstractions such as functions, objects, agents, events, etc.
At the computer language level, the lower the level of abstraction of a general-purpose language, the greater the mental damage it does, because it limits thought and awareness. And the higher the level of abstraction, the greater the freedom, creativity and awareness. Ultimately, with a language of the highest possible abstraction, a language that we can call "supreme," maximum consciousness would be achieved.
Formal completeness
Natural languages are formally complete, although there are concepts consolidated in evolved languages that in a primitive language can also be expressed, but require long descriptions.
Programming languages are also formally complete because they allow the development of any application and the expression of any paradigm. Logically, languages with a high level of abstraction allow simpler and conceptually clearer developments.
Semantic primitives model
The best −and perhaps the only viable alternative− model, both for an international auxiliary language and for a computer language, is that of universal semantic primitives or primal archetypes because they capture the essence of all things, unite opposites, connect the inner and outer world, inner and outer reality, thought and language. For an international auxiliary language this model is better than a culturally neutral language.
A subset of the lexical archetypes (lexical semantics) would also constitute the grammar (structural semantics), which would be universal. The power of archetypes lies precisely in this union of opposites.
In this way, thoughts flow without obstacles, without any filter, without any semantic gap. In archetypes there is no filter.
Against linguistic relativism is universal language, whether for human communication or for scientific communication. This implies a universal or absolute paradigm.
A universal language must reflect universal categories, philosophical categories, supreme concepts of reality, primary archetypes.
The physical analogy
An analogy can be drawn with quantum physics. A subatomic or quantum entity behaves (in the traditional conception) as a wave or as a particle. However, according to recent discoveries, the quantum entity is a wave that, at the surface level, can manifest itself as a particle, without the wave disappearing in the process.
Indeed, according to Niels Bohr's so-called "principle of complementarity," a quantum entity behaves either as a corpuscle or as a wave, but not both at the same time. But the physicist Shahriar Afshar performed an experiment in 2001, which was a modified version of the famous experiment performed by Thomas Young in 1801 (i.e. exactly 200 years later), in which he proved two important things:
The two aspects of light occur simultaneously.
Of the two aspects of light, the fundamental one is the wave aspect.
According to this model, corroborated by Afshar's experiment:
The wave phenomenon, by its very nature, is more fundamental and profound.
The fact that a corpuscle is detected does not imply that the wave disappears.
Wave and corpuscle exist simultaneously.
According to the so-called "Copenhagen interpretation" of quantum mechanics, a wave of a subatomic entity "collapses" into a particle. The usual interpretation is that the wave is converted or transformed into a particle. But there is no such conversion, for the wave continues to exist, but at a deeper level.
Wave and particle are not like two sides of the same coin, as is sometimes said. The coin metaphor puts the two aspects on the same plane, which is not the case. It is something that has to do with the levels of reality: the deep and the superficial.
Analogously, a thought is like a wave that can manifest, at the superficial level, as language (without the thought disappearing). Thought and language coexist, just as wave and particle coexist.
Heisenberg claimed that in the subatomic world we have reached the limit of language: "The problems of language here are really serious. We wish to talk in some way about the structure of atoms. But we cannot talk about atoms in ordinary language." He adduced two reasons:
When we look at that realm, there are not "things," but processes, and all we can do (forcibly) is assign names (electrons, protons, neutrons, etc.).
Our scientific terms like "same" or "different" are useless, because for example we do not know if there are many electrons or a single electron with multiple manifestations.
The analogy with linguistics is that, in the deep, language is useless to us because language refers to the superficial world, where the concepts of space, time, matter and causality exist. And in the deep, these concepts are diluted or disappear. We would need new concepts but, by their very nature, they would be inexpressible.
The Hopi Indians have a worldview in which they do not contemplate linear time. They see time as cyclical, and this vision is reflected in language: there is no verbal time (past-present-future). Nor do they need names to express ordinary propositions and only see processes manifesting themselves. Therefore, their language is better adapted than Western languages to describe the subatomic realm.
David Bohm, in his work "Totality and Implicate Order," sees two levels of reality in the universe: implicate or folded order (mplicate realm) and unfolded, expressed or manifested order (explicate realm). The order we see (for example, the movement of the planets) is really the manifestation (discrete, fragmented) of a deep order (continuous, unified) where there is no space, no time and no matter. In the deep everything is connected, unified, everything is the same thing: pure, undifferentiated consciousness. And in the superficial, the part implies the whole: the part contains the whole.
Similarly, the language we use is discrete, in correspondence with the manifested, fragmented world to which it refers. Thought, the inner world, manifests itself in language, from the deep, unified, abstract and undifferentiated to the superficial, fragmented, concrete and differentiated.
We can also establish the analogy with the energy-matter duality. Thought would correspond to energy and language to matter. We can express all these analogies as follows:
wave
thinking
energy
—————
=
———————
=
—————
particle
language
matter
The language-geometry analogy
An analogy can be established between language and geometry, since language is a structure (of symbols, which refer to mental contents) and geometry is a structure that refers to space (to spatial contents). We can say that language is "the geometry of thought".
MENTAL and SWH
MENTAL does not distort or limit thought, so SWH does not apply. In effect:
Universal Paradigm.
MENTAL does not force us to think in terms of any particular paradigm, for it offers a universal, absolute and pure paradigm, with the highest possible level of abstraction: a model that is that of the mind. By means of this universal paradigm we can express any particular paradigm. One can "jump" from one paradigm to another without having to change language.
Some authors recommend learning a new programming language every year to broaden the view of the programming task with new paradigms. This is advice that, if followed, would involve a great deal of effort and can lead to a great deal of mental confusion; mental damage, in short. With MENTAL this would not be necessary, but it would be advisable to express new paradigms, but always with this same language.
No semantic gap.
There is no semantic gap because the primitives of MENTAL are primary archetypes and there is correspondence between the internal and the external, between the superficial and the deep, between syntax and semantics. The primitives are abstract semantic resources, simple, intuitive, easy to understand and use, so it does not distort or limit thinking.
Moreover, there are not two modes of thought corresponding to lexical and structural semantics, because both are the same.
Therefore, learning the language takes very little time (we can speak in terms of minutes, not hours, as opposed to traditional languages that require days or weeks); basically we have to learn the syntax-semantics association, because we can say that we "already" know the language.
Formal completeness.
There is formal completeness. The primitives of MENTAL correspond to existing degrees of mental freedom, so any application can be developed. It is not a question of the language having some characteristics or others, since it has them all in potential.
No Blub language nor Blub paradox.
MENTAL is not a Blub language because it is at the top of the scale. It has no language above it because it represents the supreme level of abstraction. And not only as a computer language, but also as a mathematical language.
With MENTAL there is no Blub paradox. If a programmer were taught MENTAL Blub, he would immediately recognize it as a superior language, making him awaken to a new consciousness, a new freedom, by its simplicity (for in simplicity is consciousness) and by the perception of dimensions or degrees of freedom of which he was previously unaware or not fully aware. MENTAL would be a revelation, and even an initiation, by getting in touch with the common essence of all programming languages.
MENTAL unites the opposite poles of the language hierarchy of the Blub paradox. It is both a language of the highest level of abstraction and also allows the detail programming associated with a language of low level of abstraction. And the union of opposites is associated with consciousness. MENTAL represents the maximum expressible power, precisely because it is the degrees of freedom.
Standard scientific language.
MENTAL should play the role of international standard language in the scientific field (especially in mathematics and computer science), although not as an auxiliary but as a substitute for all existing languages, which should be considered as mere particular attempts prior to the universal solution found. MENTAL eliminates the boundaries between different domains and languages, offering an absolute and universal model. A language that is today more necessary than ever to configure the global space that is the Internet.
Awareness and creativity.
MENTAL is the language of abstract consciousness, which expands consciousness by establishing the union or connection of all things. It is also a supreme creative language, for creativity arises from relating or connecting concepts or ideas, and MENTAL connects them at their root.
Geometry of thought.
Since the primitives or archetypes of MENTAL are or represent dimensions or degrees of freedom, the geometry-language analogy is more than a metaphor. The simplest geometry is the Cartesian n-dimensional one. Therefore, we can speak in the case of MENTAL of a Cartesian or multidimensional linguistics. This multidimensional approach is also used by modern string theory, so we have a further analogy with quantum physics. Moreover, the abstract space of MENTAL is a new space that generalizes geometric space.
Addenda
Some views on the language - thought relationship
The idea that language conditions thought was already conjectured by the Indian philosopher of language Bhartrihari (ca. 450-510), constituting a continuous subject of debate in the Indian linguistic tradition.
For Plato, language is based on reality, shaped by projections of higher entities: the ideas or forms.
In his Organon, Aristotle established his 10 fundamental philosophical categories, subjective reflection of the properties of objective phenomena. To obtain the categories, Aristotle took as a basis the Greek grammatical categories.
For the logical positivists of the Vienna Circle, language is a manifestation of the thought and worldview of the speakers. But natural language sometimes distorts correct logical thinking and hides the true nature of reality. Therefore, they proposed (mainly Rudolph Carnap) to create a new universal and unifying language for science to allow the logical structuring of scientific concepts, the only valid type of knowledge. This logical language would eliminate any possibility of metaphysical interpretation and allow the creation of a Unified Science.
For Universology, a discipline created by Stephen Pearl Andrews, language is a reflection of the universe and reflects universal laws.
For Wittgenstein language and thought are one and the same thing: "The limits of my language mean the limits of my world" (Tractatus, 6.421).
For Karl Kerényi, there is an interdependence between language and thought. Language allows different ways of contemplating the world. In addition to allowing the expression of known truths, it is also a means of discovering unknown truths.
George Lakoff states that all languages are essentially metaphorical. Each language uses different cultural metaphors, which reveal details about how the speakers of that language think. For example, with the concepts time and money we say: invest time, spend time, and so on. There are also metaphors common to most languages, such as "up" (to mean "good") and "down" (to mean "bad"). In his work "Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things. What Categories Reveal about the Mind" (Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things. What Categories Reveal about the Mind) [1997], Lakoff considers linguistic categorization to be a reflection of mental categories.
Experiments and developments in linguistic relativity
The relationship between thought and language, especially linguistic relativism, has received much attention in different disciplines. Experiments have been attempted and it has even inspired works of fiction and the invention of artificial or imaginary languages.
One of the best examples of the validity of linguistic relativity were the experiments conducted by Philips & Boroditsky [2003]. Pictures of various objects were shown to people in whose language each object was grammatically of either the masculine or feminine gender. If they saw an object of feminine gender, they saw it with feminine qualities. And the same was true for objects of masculine gender. This showed that language and thought are closely related and that language affects our thoughts.
In 1955, James Cooke Brown created the experimental language Loglan (Logical language) to verify SWH, a culturally neutral language, not dependent on any particular culture. His goal was to study the effects of language on thought. However, the Loglan language was not finalized and no experiments were ever conducted. Today there is Lojban, an improved version of Loglan.
Láandan is an artificial language created by linguist and writer Suzette Haden Elgin in 1982 to verify the feminist hypothesis that existing human languages are inadequate to express women's thoughts, perceptions and views. The (suspect) hypothesis was that languages, in general, are better suited to express men's worldviews than women's worldviews.
She decided to write a science fiction novel about a future America in which a female language was spoken. To write the book, she felt compelled to try to construct such a language, starting with basic grammar and a small vocabulary. In June 1982, she began constructing a language called Láadan. Her initial goal was to build a vocabulary of 1,000 words, enough for a normal conversation. In the fall of that same year, the magazine Women and Language News published the first piece of writing: a Christmas story written from Maria's point of view. In 1984, her novel "Native Tongue" was published. There is a website with all the language information at http://www.laadanlanguage.org.
Newspeak is a language invented by George Orwell in his work "1984". It is the language created by the power, the "Big Brother", to control people's thinking. The purpose of Neolanguage was not only to be a means of shaping mental habits and worldview, but also to make all other modes of thought impossible: "If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought". This statement by Orwell, which corresponds to the strong version of SWH, would be true if we humans were machines forced to think in this new language. But human thought is prior to and independent of any particular language.
A group of psychologists at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Memphis conducted a statistical-type study of more than 2,000 of the world's languages in relation to the cultures in which they developed, to see if certain social environments could be related to particular linguistic properties [Lupyan & Dale, 2010]. The findings were:
The pressure of the socio-cultural environment marks the differences between the world's languages.
There are close relationships between the demographic properties of languages (such as the number of people who speak them or their global diffusion) and their grammatical complexity. The more widespread a language is, the simpler it is. Or its simplicity has facilitated its survival and diffusion. Simplicity is manifested in grammar, with simple pronouns, fewer cases and genders, and, in general, in the non-use of complex rules of prefixes and suffixes. As a result, it is easier to learn.
Languages evolve like living organisms, they adapt in a similar way to biological organisms - the same idea that Sapir held. Languages adapt to the social environments in which they are learned and used. The features of a language that are more difficult to learn are not transmitted from generation to generation and eventually disappear. Languages. in general, evolve towards greater morphological simplification.
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