Editing Linguistic relativity (section)

=== Science and philosophy ===
The question bears on philosophical, psychological, linguistic and anthropological questions.{{clarify|reason=what question?|date=May 2017}}

A major question is whether human psychological faculties are mostly innate or whether they are mostly a result of learning, and hence subject to cultural and social processes such as language. The innate opinion is that humans share the same set of basic faculties, variability due to cultural differences is less important, and the human mind is a mostly biological construction, so all humans who share the same neurological configuration can be expected to have similar cognitive patterns.

Multiple alternatives have advocates. The contrary [[Social constructivism|constructivist]] position holds that human faculties and concepts are largely influenced by socially constructed and learned categories, without many biological restrictions. Another variant is [[idealist]], which holds that human mental capacities are generally unrestricted by biological-material structures. Another is [[essentialism|essentialist]], which holds that essential differences{{clarify|reason=what essential differences|date=May 2017}} may influence the ways individuals or groups experience and conceptualize the world. Yet another is [[relativist]] ([[cultural relativism]]), which sees different cultural groups as employing different conceptual schemes that are not necessarily compatible or commensurable, nor more or less in accord with external reality.{{sfn|Leavitt|2011}}

Another debate considers whether thought is a type of internal speech or is independent of and prior to language.<ref>{{cite book |last=Raykowski |first=Wes |date=2014|title=Conceptual Understructure of Human Experience: Volume 1 (Thesis)}}</ref>

In the [[philosophy of language]], the question addresses the relations between language, knowledge and the external world, and the concept of [[truth]]. Philosophers such as [[Hilary Putnam|Putnam]], [[Jerry Fodor|Fodor]], [[Donald Davidson (philosopher)|Davidson]], and [[Daniel Dennett|Dennett]] see language as directly representing entities from the objective world, and categorization as reflecting that world. Other philosophers (e.g. [[Willard Van Orman Quine|Quine]], [[John Searle|Searle]], and [[Michel Foucault|Foucault]]) argue that categorization and conceptualization is [[Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy)|subjective]] and arbitrary. Another view, represented by [[Jason Josephson Storm|Jason Storm]], seeks a third way by emphasizing how language changes and imperfectly represents reality without being completely divorced from ontology.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Josephson-Storm|first=Jason Ānanda|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1249473210|title=Metamodernism : the future of theory|date=2021|isbn=978-0-226-78679-7|location=Chicago|pages=186–7|oclc=1249473210}}</ref>

Another question is whether language is a tool for representing and referring to objects in the world, or whether it is a system used to construct mental representations that can be communicated.{{clarify|reason=what is the relevance of this in the local context? Is this a true dichotomy?|date=May 2017}}