Eager_Question t1_iu7psl2 wrote
Reply to comment by Terpomo11 in How Morality Changes in a Foreign Language - fascinating ethical shifts come with thinking in a different language by fonliahea1994
A wonderful habit to have!
I'm wondering if you can do this on purpose. My French is very unemotional and theoretical, as I basically have to reverse-engineer sentences in it a lot of the time.
But if I read only Enlightenment works in French and never anything else, could I trick myself into making an "enlightenment thought" switch, like having a virtual machine inside another one?
I'm also learning Latin. If I read a lot of ancient Latin literature, will I get an "ancient Rome" switch inside my brain? Will it change my instincts in Latin vs French vs English vs Spanish? I know for a fact that I have found some books or short stories vastly more compelling in one language than the other (e.g. La Casa De Asterión is a masterpiece in Spanish. It's interesting and okay in English. Mistborn is a lot of fun in English. It is unbearable in Spanish).
I think the capacity to turn different moral intuitions on and off could prove astonishingly useful, and yet I rarely hear anyone discuss doing this on purpose.
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