According to the weak version of linguistic relativity, also called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, the features of an individual’s native language influence his worldview and perception. We decided to test this hypothesis on the sufficient conditional and the necessary conditional, expressed differently in Chinese and French. In Chinese, connectors for both conditionals exist and are used in everyday life, while there is only a connector for the sufficient conditional in French. A first hypothesis follows from linguistic relativity: for the necessary conditional, (...) better logic performance is expected in Chinese participants rather than French participants. As a second hypothesis, for all participants, we expect performance on the sufficient conditional to be better than on the necessary conditional. Indeed, despite the isomorphism of the two conditionals, they differ in how information is processed for reasoning. We decided to study reasoning under uncertainty as it reflects reality more accurately. To do so, we analyzed the coherence of participants using de Finetti’s theory for deduction under uncertainty. The results of our study show no significant difference in performance between Chinese and French participants, neither on the sufficient conditional nor on the necessary conditional. Thus, our first hypothesis derived from the weak version of linguistic relativity is not confirmed. In contrast, our results confirm the second hypothesis in two out of three inference schemas. (shrink)

We discuss four interconnected issues that we believe have hindered investigations into how language may affect thinking. These have had a tendency to reappear in the debate concerning linguistic relativity over the past decades, despite numerous empirical findings. The first is the claim that it is impossible to disentangle language from thought, making the question concerning “influence” pointless. The second is the argument that it is impossible to disentangle language from culture in general, and from social interaction in particular, so (...) it is impossible to attribute any differences in the thought patterns of the members of different cultures to language per se. The third issue is the objection that methodological and empirical problems defeat all but the most trivial version of the thesis of linguistic influence: that language gives new factual information. The fourth is the assumption that since language can potentially influence thought from “not at all” to “completely,” the possible forms of linguistic influence can be placed on a cline, and competing theories can be seen as debating the actual position on this cline. We analyze these claims and show that the first three do not constitute in-principle objections against the validity of the project of investigating linguistic influence on thought, and that the last one is not the best way to frame the empirical challenges at hand. While we do not argue for any specific theory or mechanism for linguistic influence on thought, our discussion and the reviewed literature show that such influence is clearly possible, and hence in need of further investigations. (shrink)

Reevaluates Western and Chinese philosophical traditions to question the boundaries of entrenched conceptual frameworks.

The aim of the talk was to present a brief account of the history of investigations about concepts in the last decades, thereby contributing to the diffusion of cognitive science. The central episode in that history is the turning point that resultedfrom the researches carried out by Eleanor Rosch and others from the beginning of the 70's. Those researches constitute a challenge to the CLASSICAL VIEW OF CONCEPTS . The fact that the rejection of the classical view is not a (...) viable alternative generates what we called the PROBLEM OF CONCILIATION - that is, the problem of conciliating the classical view with the modern empirical results. The exposition ends with some suggestions towards the solution of the problem of conciliation.O objetivo da palestra foi o de apresentar um apanhado sucinto da história das investigações sobre conceitos nas últimas décadas, com isso contribuindo para a divulgação da Ciência Cognitiva. O episódio central dessa história é a guinada resultante das pesquisas realizadas por Eleonor Rosch e outros a partir do inicio dos anos setenta. Estas pesquisas colocam em cheque a CONCEPÇÃO CLÁSSICA DE CONCEITOS . O fato de que o abandono da concepção clássica não é uma alternativa viável, dá origem ao que chamamos de PROBLEMA DA CONCILIAÇÃO, ou seja, o de compatibilizar a concepção clássica com as descobertas modernas. A apresentação se encerra com algumas sugestões para a solução do problema. (shrink)

The resent paper reviews three phases in the literature on cognition and colour, and also Luria's (1976) observations of the effects that literacy and/or schooling have on colour naming and colour categorization. It is argued that Luria's own interpretation of his findings is partiafly flawed by inconsistency, and by ethnocentric presuppositions concerning mediation and abstraction. A revised interpretation is proposed that draws on Gibson's (1950, 1966) contrast between direct and indirect perceptions. It is suggested that language usage and cultural practices (...) come to exert a joint effect upon the experience of colour by selectively directing attention towards or away from the various perceptible aspects of coloured objects. (shrink)

In Basic Color Terms, Berlin and Kay argued for a restricted number of "basic" color words—words they claimed to be culturally universal. This claim about language was buttressed by psychologist Eleanor Rosch's famous work on color prototypes. Together, the works of Berlin and Kay and Rosch are the foundation for a contemporary research tradition investigating the biological foundations of color naming. In this article, the author describes some common objections to the works of Berlin and Kay and Rosch and argues (...) that they are not significant. The claim that explanations of color naming ought to be strictly cultural also is discussed and rejected. (shrink)