Lnguage constructs reality?

Re: Lnguage constructs reality?

Words are tools that we use to describe our ideas. Whenever, we have new ideas, we come up with new words. This leads to the conclusion, that "our reality" constructs our language (not the other way around).


There are many things in the universe that we are not aware of, yet. They still exist, despite our ignorance.

Re: Lnguage constructs reality?


If a bear shits in the woods and nobody walks by it does it still smell?

If seems silly to me to argue reality not existing without someone to experience it, interpret it, and then talk or write about it. Our solar system would still exist even if the chemicals in our atmosphere were insufficiently proportioned to provide for life on this planet.

Re: Lnguage constructs reality?
language is a formal structure, with internal rules, and an internal logic.
That logic is not the logic of our empirical experience. For instance, the concept of cause: we don't see or touch "causes" in the experience. Causes are not physical entities.

So, I would answer your question in two different ways:
As an evolutionary tool, language proceeds from human experience.
But language creates it's own "world", that means, language is an interpretation of the world, a configuration of it.
There are many languages, colloquial, scientif, religious, artistic, etc. They express different configurations of several levels of our experience..

But if your question simply means that creating the word "stone" we give existence to a physical stone, I reject that idea. Words only create words and relations between them.

But language

Language does not create the physical world around us. It does, however, influence how we perceive that world. This is most evident, perhaps, not in the words we have for concrete objects but, rather, for abstract ideas.

There had to be a concept of 'god' before there was a word for that concept. (There need not be a god, just the concept in man's mind.) But once the word for this has been coined, it influences how we view the entire universe. Our view does not change the universe. It does change how we act and think about exterior forces. Some Budhists and others will argue that we cannot know ultimate reality as long as we are forced to use words to describe that reality. I believe there is merit in that.

In response to your comment "is langauge the construct of our reality. I think that our minds can verbally arrange ideas in a syntax fashion. Interesting enough this syntax reality is dependent on the nature of the outputs from our sensory perceptions. Namely visual perception coupled with auditory perception mostly, (there are other senses not mentioned). Constructs of this verbal abstractual thought dialogue that is created in the brain is processed and then relayed in a dialectal format that is descriptive (this is how things make sense). Fortunately, enough because of the dependence of language on the output of information, on relayed information from sensory data, it is a result of an intricate processing scenario. In this case emphasizing the word scene here, which the brain describes through language. This is quite the input/output relationship, dependent upon another for the propper evaulation of data creating the dialectal response language. Which is in my view just a conformation of individual reality for the perciever(s) involved.

See my sig!

I don't think it's one or the other, but I do think that language can have a large impact on reality.

Language is constructed by humans, so in a way I guess it's a construct of reality. If you're asking if it constructs reality, that's different.