Topics Language

Question Is it possible to understand "left" without understanding "right"?

Accepted:
August 22, 2009

Comments

This is a clever and interesting question. Much depends on how we understand the word "understand."

In one sense of "understand" the answer to your question is yes: we can train a guide dog (or a robot or a child) the command "left" -- and successfully so, in the sense that the dog (or robot or child) really turns left whenever it receives this command -- without teaching it the command "right" (or any other command that makes it turn right). But this dog (or robot or child) then has an impoverished understanding, one that fails fully to appreciate the role the word "left" plays in our language game of spatial orientation.

I would offer this analogy. A child can, in some very rudimentary sense, understand what a knight (in chess) is without knowing anything at all about any of the other pieces: she simply knows how a knight can move around the chess board. But someone who actually knows how to play chess has an understanding of what a knight is that's much richer than the child's.

Question Is it possible to understand "left" without understanding "right"? Accepted:August 22, 2009

Question Is it possible to understand "left" without understanding "right"?

Accepted:
August 22, 2009