Linguistic Relativity
One of my pet peeves is the widespread and false belief that language shapes thought, and not the other way around. Most recent example:
Our words define how we think about things.
In reality, no one knows exactly how much influence language has on thought, but based on the available evidence, which is scant, almost all experts agree that linguistic determinism, the idea that language defines or determines our thought, is false. Let me quote the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
In light of the vast literature on linguistic relativity hypotheses, one would expect that a good deal of careful experimental work had been done on the topic. It hasn’t. Often the only evidence cited in favor of such hypotheses is to point to a difference between two languages and assert that it adds up to a difference in modes of thought. But this simply assumes what needs to be shown, namely that such linguistic differences give rise to cognitive differences.
There is also agreement that language has some influence on thought, but it is certainly not nearly as strong as is commonly held, and no one has been able to amass evidence beyond reasonable doubt for any strong version of a linguistic relativity hypothesis. In the passage from Squashed I quoted above, I would change “define” to “have some influence on”.
