Laura Paquette - Thoughts on notes and In class discussion

 Today we talked about in class on language. More specifically about how humans animate things through language. In addition to this, we spoke of Hellen Keller and how she was separated from the world because of language. Some questions that I wrote down in my notes were the following: 

Do we only understand things because of language then? Do we animate things because this is the only way we understand the world? Can we (truly) understand the world outside the living (human)? Miscommunication between not understanding the animate [living (human)] and the inanimate? We do this to humans. 

We’ve anthropomorphized things for so long; this is the only way.

As I read over this, I thought back to a concept that Descartes described as "representative reality" or "formal reality" where we understand things based on the reality around us. Just as we describe the world through our human experiences, each unique and particular to the individual, we understand the world in the same way. We can never truly understand the point of view of another; we can only piece together what we have experienced and get it to something close to what another is feeling

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