Re:The Truth About Autism: Scientists Reconsider What They T...
by ntoshev on Thursday February 28, 2008 @02:16AM
(#125308)
She doesn't redefine language, this is the meaning she has always understood. And it is different from your and my meaning, but still very close and human. Autism may ultimately help us understand ourselves.
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Re:The Truth About Autism: Scientists Reconsider What They T...
by mattmaroon on Thursday February 28, 2008 @02:50PM
(#125633)
That's incorrect though. That's like saying someone always called an orange an apple, and therefore their apple (really an orange) is the same as ours.
The whole point of a word is so that when I say it, you know what it means. The word "language" has an agreed upon meaning, and that meaning is not twiddling a knob.
Re:The Truth About Autism: Scientists Reconsider What They T...
by ntoshev on Thursday February 28, 2008 @03:29PM
(#125653)
Apples and oranges are not the same, but they have things in common. That's why we have a concept of a fruit. You and I have never thought twiddling a knob and words have things in common, and yet another human being finds them almost identical. This is when I realized that it is really human to think about interacting with environment in the same way we interact with other people. I wouldn't have thought of this by myself.
Yes, she doesn't use the word "language" in the meaning we "normal" people have agreed to. But this is not the point.