Quote:
Originally Posted by Jens
My opinion about the cold/no-heat question is somewhat related to my dislike of so-called philosophical languages (like Loglan). In formulating concepts one has two choices: how human beings sense things, and how we know that nature works. My choice would be for the humanocentric approach. If people feel cold as a real feeling, not simply the absence of heat (and we certainly do), then I would suggest using "cold" and not "no-heat." I could add the caveat that it might be worthwhile looking at other languages than English. If it turns out that a lot of natural languages use "non-hot" to mean "cold", then I could see using it. But every language that I've studied has a separate word for "cold".
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So, do you see this as being something that might change on a word-by-word basis? In other words, might sensory experience be a mask over conceptual knowledge? For something we respond to quickly due to necessity - a person feels fire, and doesn't have time to contemplate the mechanism of heat production - all one cares about is the sensory zero standard of "comfortable sense of touch". Or, in the case of freezing cold, might it be that a person always feels that they need heat, that it is a necessity, and the moment they hear "No-Heat", they respond immediately to this lacking? For concepts that do not require immediate mental processing, words may be expressed differently and in a more precise manner?