What is it that informs us that each individual's perception of reality is, in fact, an individual experience not directly sharable? I've often heard that point being asserted, but I've never never heard an explanation as to why that assertion should be so.

Well, for one thing, check out the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, which basically says that our language and vocabulary shape the way we perceive reality. So since everybody has a different vocabulary, or even different understandings of the same words, we all perceive reality a bit differently than others around us.

Samuel R. Delany's novel Babel-17 is centered on a fictional language that denies its speakers independent thought, forcing them to think purely logical thoughts. This language is used as a weapon of war, because it is supposed to convert everyone who learns it to a traitor. In the novel, the language Babel-17 is likened to computer programming languages that do not allow errors or imprecise statements.

Quote from: 40hz on October 12, 2008, 11:29 PM

Plowing through the Wikipedia article, but I think I'm going to have to do some additional reading before I can comment. I found one factual error* in the article that makes me wonder what else in there is wrong...

To be honest, I didn't read the Wikipedia article, because I've been introduced to Sapir-Whorf through college courses. So I was just linking it for the sake of providing some background information about it.