The Stuff of Thought Reflection
In this class, we have spent time analyzing and trying to understand the concepts in Steven Pinker’s book The Stuff of Thought. The book breaks down the way we think and relate it to everyday life situations. The book covers many interesting topics than can affect the way we think about our daily lives. This book challenges us to think critically about our language and how it affects the way that we think. The book gives good examples to try and relate what is being said to try and help the reader understand the concept better and give examples people can relate to. This books gives advice on how to better understand the way we think and improve the way we communicate with one another. This paper will be breaking down concepts that are brought up in The Stuff of Thought and applying it to personal experience and encounters that I have had with these …show more content…
One concept covered in the book is the difference between the sense and the reference of a word. “The two meanings of ‘meaning’ are sometimes referred to as reference (a thing or set of things in the world) and sense (a summary formula)” (Pinker 282). In other words, reference is what the object is actually and sense is what we perceive the object to be in our head. In most cases, the sense and reference of a word are the same, but it all depends on a person’s perception of sense and reference of word. For example, if another person and I are talking about a dog and I think that it is a Golden Retriever and the other person thinks it is a Yellow Lab, we both have the same reference, but we have different references of what the object is.
Another concept covered in Pinker’s book The Stuff of Thought is language acquisition. Language acquisition is the way that we learn and acquire our language. Everyone knows that babies
In this class, we have spent time analyzing and trying to understand the concepts in Steven Pinker’s book The Stuff of Thought. The book breaks down the way we think and relate it to everyday life situations. The book covers many interesting topics than can affect the way we think about our daily lives. This book challenges us to think critically about our language and how it affects the way that we think. The book gives good examples to try and relate what is being said to try and help the reader understand the concept better and give examples people can relate to. This books gives advice on how to better understand the way we think and improve the way we communicate with one another. This paper will be breaking down concepts that are brought up in The Stuff of Thought and applying it to personal experience and encounters that I have had with these …show more content…
One concept covered in the book is the difference between the sense and the reference of a word. “The two meanings of ‘meaning’ are sometimes referred to as reference (a thing or set of things in the world) and sense (a summary formula)” (Pinker 282). In other words, reference is what the object is actually and sense is what we perceive the object to be in our head. In most cases, the sense and reference of a word are the same, but it all depends on a person’s perception of sense and reference of word. For example, if another person and I are talking about a dog and I think that it is a Golden Retriever and the other person thinks it is a Yellow Lab, we both have the same reference, but we have different references of what the object is.
Another concept covered in Pinker’s book The Stuff of Thought is language acquisition. Language acquisition is the way that we learn and acquire our language. Everyone knows that babies