trystan.org

As I continue my psychology education, I become increasingly convinced of the strong coupling between language and thought. I was first exposed to the notion over a decade ago when I began working on my first undergrad degree. The community college I attended at the time, Clark College in Vancouver WA., had an unusually gifted and motivated English department and this idea was held in high esteem. However, I was skeptical. For instance, how could they explain geometric reasoning? My current view has shifted in that you can only ‘reason’ geometrically once you have aquired a language, albeit non-verbal, that allows you to do so.

A personal experience that reinforces this view for me is programming languages. When one first begins to learn a new programming language, it is typical to learn by drawing analogies or parallels to a language one already knows. Programming in the new language is accomplished by reasoning in the old language but expressing the result in the new language. However, once a new language is learned ‘well enough’ one begins to ‘think’ in that new language. Most languages offer what I would call “cognitive deltas” with respect to other languages. That is, certain cognitive constructs will be easier or harder to express in one language as opposed to another. But if we assume language is actually part of, or wholly, cognition, a sort of self referential feedback loop exists. I believe a lot of interesting hypothesises can be derived by thinking about aspects of this feedback. Indeed, researchers such as Douglas Hofstadter focus on such topics. One important aspect to me, and one I feel is especially ignored by programmers, is the degree at which an implementation language influences ’what you can think’ or at least what you’re likely to think.