Can language describe reality? with Nick Enfield

This episode is with Nick Enfield. He is a Professor of Linguistics at the University of Sydney. Nick's research on language, culture, cognition and social life is based on long term field work in mainland Southeast Asia, especially Laos. His books include Natural Causes of Language, Distributed Agency, and How We Talk. His latest book is 'Language vs Reality: Why language is good for lawyers and bad for scientists'

In this conversation we talk about evolution of language and How well it can describe reality?, Can language nudge our thoughts?, Maths as a language, evolution of human reason and rationality. 

Guest info:

Website: http://nickenfield.org/

Google scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ZZ6woWgAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=sra

Twitter: https://twitter.com/njenfield?s=20&t=rt6kyVo-IRUsdRu1Q4_W7g

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Timestamps: 

00:00:00 Introduction 

00:01:07 What is language?  

00:04:01 When does a communication system becomes a language? 

00:08:02 How language got started?  

00:13:31 Do sapiens have an advantage which helped us to start a language? 

00:17:30 Language is too blunt for scientists and good for lawyers  

00:23:40 We simplify the complexity of the world 

00:28:23 Why language was evolved? 

00:30:52 On Donald Hoffman's work 

00:35:36 Brute reality and social reality 

00:36:59 Yuval Harrari's imagined reality  

00:40:38 Power of all the languages 

00:44:29 Language in an AI society 

00:47:25 Complexity of a language 

00:56:18 Can complexity of a language affect psychology?   

01:00:08 Sapira-Whorf hypothesis 

01:04:07 Co-evolution and evolution of languages  

01:08:05 Desmond Morris' work on neoteny 

01:10:54 Purpose of a language 

01:16:04 Rationality, reasoning and language  

01:22:35 Truth and rationality 

01:27:45 Fighting misinformation

01:30:19 Confirmation bias 

01:31:55 Should we care if a language is dying? 

01:38:06 Is mathematics a language? 

01:44:26 Thank you!  

#reasonwithscience #languages #evolution