Hey guys, I guess I'm jumping in a bit late, but this summer has gone by way too fast for my liking. In this post I'm going to give my thoughts on some of the questions posed before, and offer up a few new ones for discussion. I'll start with the discussions at hand. Characteristics of a persons appearance that are associated with wealth are often considered beautiful, nowadays this is true concerning women more-so than men. This becomes apparent whenever we observe how people's views of beauty have changed through the years. We may not make the instant association of tanned skin with wealth in our minds, but it is the root of our views. Also, concerning the generalizations Sam pointed out, I agree with Janet in that he is not trying to impose those views upon readers, but just pointing out a common situation.
There were several posts earlier discussing the question, can a concept be understood if there is no word for it? The example was used of people in 1984 with freedom or liberty. For those people the concept of liberty is drastically warped from our definition, in the party slogan they say "freedom is slavery," so there is a word, but the definition has been changed. I don't think this is the best example we could use, I would point to an infant. It does not yet know any words but it understands what it wants, it does not need words to understand food, loneliness or discomfort.
Another main question is if everyone were to live in the same semantic environment would there be less conflict. Of course there would be less conflict. I realize that this is a harsh generalization, but from my experience it does have truth in it. Take a girl who was brought up in, say, alabama, and a girl who had grown up in Hollywood, two extremely different semantic environments, what do you think will happen if they discuss abortion. Chances are they would disagree because their intensional associations and views concerning abortion would be drastically different because of the semantic environment they were raised in. However if they had both been raised in alabama or in Hollywood their views would probably be more similar. On the other hand I feel that it is impossible to have every human being live and be raised in the same semantic environment. Also, if there was no difference in opinions, if there was no conflict, would there be no, or drastically less, progress?
Finally I'd like to ask about the story of A-Town and B-Ville. I eel as if I should be drawing some deeper meaning from it. I get that the two towns did essentially the same thing, but went about it in different ways. Is there a real difference between A-Town's welfare and B-Ville's insurance?
I'd love to hear opinions on anything I've said
(Connor Tweardy)
1 comment:
Hello everyone,
I too am sorry for posting this late into the summer. I will not make excuses, I shall only say that with working, sports, family vacations, etc., I have neglected my intellectual duties.
I'd like to tackle the issue of whether something can be understood if there is no word for it. To say that nothing is comprehendible without a word assigned to it is like stating that something only exists if you perceive it to exist. Words are merely vehicles for human thought. Without words, communication, educated conversation, and "progress" (in the way that most of us think of it), would not come to fruition, but the most pure and basic aspects of natural understanding would still exist (love, hate, biological desires).
I understand the logic of Connor's point on semantic enviroments, but it leaves no room for the possibility that humans are free to choose their own thoughts and opinions, and that we are not necessarily the product of our upbringings. Take for example my own mom. She grew up in a strongly Roman Catholic household. She has become a full-fledged atheist by developing her own perceptions on the universe. We can apply this idea to the fact that if everyone lived in a constant, singular environment, there would be independent minds which would create their own conflicting ideas, in turn developing more and more divergents from the original status quo. If human freedom truly exists, then environment should have nothing to do with one's ideas and feelings towards other ideas.
I'll definitely be blogging more frequently now that I'm getting back on the ball. Chow.
(Taylor Burke)
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