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CANDY_FROM_A_RHETORICAL_BABY
March 20, 2021
Alfred Korzybski, 1933, said:
"When our primitive ancestors were building their
language, quite naturally they started with the
lowest orders of abstractions, which are the most
immediately connected with the outside world.
They established a language of 'sensations'. Like
infants, they identified their feelings with the
outside world and personified most of the outside
events."
_Science and Sanity_, p.372
This style of learned exposition was common among our
primitive ancestors back in the mid-20th Century, but
it quickly went out of fashion when it was realized So going after this
that it was indulging in unsupported fantasies about one at this date is
pre-historic humanity. None of us were there, we kind-of a cheap shot.
have no records of the events, and making intelligent Never let it be said
inferences is difficult-- I'd pass one up.
The funny bit is droning on about the problem of
a sensory-oriented language using an anthropology Korzybski is just
that can't possibly have been observed. a laugh-a-minute.
SCIENCE_AND_SANITY
And in any case, current
thinking has it though that
a lot of our linguistic
capability is baked-in, This is the kind of
i.e. biologically innate... thing that gets Steven
Pinker ranting about
And even the question of blank slate-ism, so
whether some particular whatever you do don't
mental feature of this is mention it to him.
unique to human beings isn't
something you want to assume
without checking.
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