Very happy to see Whorf and Sapir mentioned in this list.

I first heard of their hypothesis in Stuart Chase's "The Tyranny of Words." Chase mentions that there are soft and hard forms of this hypothesis, the soft being that language influences our thinking, the hard being that language conditions and determines what we are able to think about.

When I recognised the connection between language and thinking I became pretty much obsessed with it and determined to find out more. It seemed so massively relevant yet criminally overlooked, both by myself and people in general.

I read everything I could get my hands on. Science and Sanity by Alfred Korzybski. Language in Thought and Action by S I Hayakawa. The Meaning of Meaning by C K Ogden and I A Richards. The Art of Awareness by S J Bois.

It took me a while to realise that it was deeper insight into the connection between language and thinking that I needed to lift me out of my vain obsession with choices of words. Before that, I could easily get hung up on words, refused to use certain words in my thinking and forever struggling for alternatives, and had an unhealthy interest in the words other people used.

I eventually came to see it as a semi-involuntary dirty trick of my past, to try to counter people's positions not by reflecting on the substance of what they said, but uprooting their positions by attacking the words that they use.

It still bugs me no-end that a lot of these old works I mentioned earlier, and the connection between language and thinking as a whole, and its direct relevance to philosophising and the construction of worldviews, ideologies, belief systems, etc., goes largely unrecognised.

For example, I see people speaking words of unity while thinking in divisive language. Just as I once spoke about oneness while sowing division by continuing to think in tribalistic, ideological, identity-oriented language. Now, I see this as a kind of intellectual/psychological trap that's a fairly natural consequence of remaining unaware of the connections between language and thinking, or of the concept of languages of thinking in general.

I see you have plenty of posts on various philosophies and more on language too. I'll be diving into them throughout the day.

I'm very happy to connect with you on here.