Sapir Whorf

The Sapir Whorf hypothesis proposes that our world view is created by our language. It suggests that people with different ways of describing the world would see the world differently.  You can download a PowerPoint explaining the main points here.

The problem is that, as all human beings are equipped with roughly similar brains and sets of sensory equipment, any difference in world views is likely to be tiny and subject to dispute. The Piraha Indians are one candidate group for a significantly different world view but the claims made about them are hotly contested.

One test of the hypothesis would be if it were literally impossible to translate a concept from a particular language. All known languages do seem to be translatable, but it is intriguing to speculate about whether we would be able to speak to, say, dolphins, computers with artificial intelligence or space aliens. 

Time Travel

This week's New Scientist has an article on possible quantum time travel. This does not break any of the rules of Einstein's theory of relativity but only permits time travel back to the moment the time machine is created. We therefore know that time machines haven't been invented yet because we haven't met any time travellers. 

One of the fascinating phenomena that was mentioned in passing was a variation on the double slit experiment (see 12 Nov post) in which the detectors were telescopes positioned beyond the screen that shows the photons. Observing through such a telescope affected the outcome of the experiment and is an example of an effect that precedes its cause.

Happiness Index

The government is proposing setting up a happiness index. This is not as easy as it sounds as Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill found. There is a useful article here on the philosophical implications of happiness that might be useful as an illustration in the exam.

The Piraha

The Piraha tribe are said to provide evidence against Noam Chomsky's theory of a universal grammar. Amongst the unique features of their language are:

• No numbers beyond two
• Lack of recursion in sentences
• No colour words except light and dark
• Entire set of personal pronouns borrowed from another language.

If the Piraha do not use the same conventions as every other known language doubt is cast on the innateness of our language ability. Debate over the Piraha language continues to rage. You can find out in detail about the Piraha tribe here. There is a detailed article on the Piraha language here.

Schrödinger’s Cat

Schrödinger’s thought experiment about a cat illustrates the idea of quantum superposition; until the cat is actually observed it exists in an indeterminate state in which it is both alive and dead. When the box is opened the indeterminate state collapses and the cat is either alive or dead.

In the 'many worlds' interpretation of quantum theory the cat always lives and always dies; two separate universes diverge at the moment when the atom decays.

 

Richard Feynman, one of the world's greatest authorities on quantum mechanics said, "If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics".

The double slit experiment

Kant’s transcendental deduction

Kant proposed

• that a priori knowledge could be independent of the content of experience – in disagreement with the empiricists
• that pure a priori knowledge, without any empirical content, can only lead to limited deductions and conclusions about  possible experiences  - in disagreement with the rationalists.

In order to make sense of experience certain a priori, or transcendental conditions, seated in our minds, must exist; they are not provided by experience in general or indeed by a combination of sets of experiences.  

Ideas like time, space and cause are, according to Kant, pure a priori forms without which human beings would not be able to process the world of experience. Specifically, we would not be able to operate in the rule governed world we find ourselves in unless our minds came pre-equipped with concepts such as cause, time and space. The claim that synthetic a priori knowledge is necessary is known as Kant's transcendental deduction and it is the central argument of his Critique of Pure Reason.

Kant’s transcendental deduction brings the perceiver and subjective experience into accounts of the world. Time is not some disembodied clock that that ticks away irrespective of the observer, as Isaac Newton thought; it is an aspect of how the individual interacts with the world. Kant’s insights into the subjective nature of knowledge chime well with Einstein’s concepts of time and space being relative to the observer.

Emotivism

Emotivism claims that ethical sentences do not express propositions that can be verified in the real world but merely emotional attitudes. Emotivism in its current form was developed by A. J. Ayer in his 1936 book Language, Truth and Logic and in later works by C. L. Stevenson.

Ayer, a logical positivist, states that there is no observable truth value in a statement like

stealing is wrong.

At best, the statement expresses my opinion that stealing is wrong. Moral statements, according to Ayer, are little more that noises of approval (hurray) or disapproval (boo); emotivism is thus sometimes known as the boo/ hurray theory.

Ayer admitted that a statement like stealing is wrong implied both that the speaker disapproved and that others should also do so. The statement has more ‘force’ than a simple statement of fact but it does not amount to an imperative.

Moral universalism and moral relativism and moral nihilism

Moral universalism is the claim that that there are moral values that are independent of any given social or historical context. Many religious ethical systems make this claim but so do deontologists and utilitarians.   Sartre, an existentialist, states that because all human beings have the same needs and desires they share a universal human condition which makes all people everywhere morally equivalent. The United Nations Declaration of human rights is an example of a universalist approach to ethical issues in the modern world.  

Moral relativism refuses to make any large claims about the human condition and views morality as socially, geographically and historically variable. In acknowledging the differences between moral laws in different times and places the moral relativist usually reserves judgement on varied systems of morals so that no system can claim to be better than any other. Acceptance of moral relativism makes moral progress difficult or impossible as, if all systems are equal, there is no reason to change moral beliefs.

Moral nihilism denies that moral values are in any sense a feature of the real world and states that no action is inherently right or wrong.    

What sex is the soul?

In today's 'In Our Time' programme on women's contribution to the Enlightenment it was suggested that Descartes' dualism, with its emphasis on the soul as separate from the body, might have contributed to more egalitarian attitudes to the education of women. This is in stark contrasts to the supposedly egalitarian Rousseau who said

The education of women should always be relative to that of men. To please, to be useful to us, to make us love and esteem them, to educate us when young, to take care of us when grown up, to advise, to console us, to render our lives easy and agreeable; these are the duties of women at all times, and what they should be taught in their infancy