Language influences the way we perceive reality

I will try to address your main point first. You base your refutation on circular causation, to that you claim that "Our use of language is shaped just as much by our perception of the world as it is the other way around" The other way around being that our world is shaped by our perception of language? The example you use to illustrate it is "my feelings about sex lead me to use pornography which then impacts my feelings about sex". Take a note that this doesn't illustrate the premise that "our language is shaped by our perception of the world" in that "my feelings about sex", both "feelings" and "sex" are not part of what we call "language" (I take that by "world" you mean "reality"). I am making the point that your example must "fit" the initial statement which was "language influences the way we perceive reality". Nevertheless I will consider it as illustrating the point that you are making, circularity, but in a different way. My first point is that singular causation exists There are probably other examples fit to the point, but I will just present an argument against what you call "circular" causation. My argument is that if we claim "circular" causation to exist, then Newton's First Law is a bit contradicted. As stated the Law says : "A body will remain at rest or move with a constant velocity unless acted upon by a force." I will not make any metaphysical claims, but it seems to me that this law describes a singular causation in that there does not need to be something that stops a body from moving, if it is moving, so the force that made it move is it's only cause. If there is such claim in modern physics that the movement of the object caused the same force that caused it, then I am at a loss. My conclusion is that singular causality exists, assuming I have understood Newton aright! My next point is that "circularity" leads to impossible conclusions. Moving on to particulars, if we claim as you said that "my feelings about sex lead me to use pornography which then impacts my feelings about sex", then essentially you claim that "feelings" have changed after the use of pornography. OK, but if we use infinite regress, and assume that this process goes on for long, then every time I use pornography my feelings would a bit more, and then a bit more, and then a bit more. Is this possible? And moreover is this how the relationship of "world" or "reality" to language works? This would mean that every time we are influenced by the world around us, we change our linguistic conception of it, and we are always in contact with the world around us, but a number of our linguistic conceptions about it seem to remain stable, whereas with circular causation they would keep changing and changing to the point that our understanding of the world would always be "new". If for example the feeling was pleasure A, after the use of pornography it becomes pleasure A1, then because I keep using pornography, it becomes pleasure A2....and so on. But, lets take temperature as an example. We can't deny that temperature is something that has degrees, but when it changes from -10 to +50(Celsius) our feeling of the object turns from cold (-10) is cold, to hot (+50). If circularity was the only thing that went on then my feeling of cold would be (-10) is cold, (-9) is less cold (-8) is less cold even (+50) would be less cold. Somehow, after a certain point, our perception changes from "cold" to "hot". A limit has to be drawn because circularity can go on for ever. We need to be able to reach the point where we started from. If the temperature moved circularly (-10) to (+50) to (-10) to (+50), clearly our feelings must be able to tell us that there is a difference, but also, that something is stable. Circularity can't account for stability if it keeps changing our perception. Our perception must be stable. The fact that we both communicate and that, although time has passed in between, we still understand each other, also suggests that something remains stable. Whereas if your claim is right then we wouldn't be able to do that. There seems to be something wrong with "circular" causation. My third point is to prove is that the notion of "circularity" can be derived from the notion of "singular causation", but that "singular causation" is all that there is. I am assuming that the "world" or "reality" which is "something" out there, has first and foremost the attribute of being "real", no matter what this attribute might be, when I say that two different things are both real, then I assume that the attribute of reality exists equally in both. In respect to that attribute, no matter how different the objects are, they are equally "real". I don't really know what the attribute of "reality" is, but assuming that it exists as stated, that is being equal in different things, I use the word "real" in the sense that "the table is real" and "the chair is real" refer to different things, but reality, as it goes, remains the same for both of them, it doesn't change in quality or anything else, they are both equally "real". Now, assuming my point about the unchanging nature of "reality" is valid, then every time we use the word real we don't change the meaning of it. We can say:. The claim that "my feelings about sex lead me to use pornography which then impacts my feelings about sex", appears to be circular when it isn't. Why? Because "pornography" is taken as a constant not a variable. For example you can have "circularity" if you claim "my feelings about sex (A) led me to use pornography (B) which changed my feelings about sex (A1), then (B) remains constant. You still need to work out how (A) changes to (A1), but (B) remains the same. All you end up with is (B) causing (A) and then (A1) and then (A2) which is singular causality. If (B) changes then we have (A) causing a change to (B) which causes (A1) which causes (B1) which causes (A2) which causes (B2), Each event is causing a different one. Singularity again. But our thought needs to find its way home, otherwise we wouldn't be able to move our perception from hot to cold and back to hot. How can that be? For that to happen we need an account of perception that is both stable and dynamic. This can only be achieved if we can always use the same recipe for constructing the perception of (A). [A] to have the same meaning in (A1) and (A2) but also we must be able to discern between (A1) and (A2) as being different from one another, not only do we need that, but also we need a way to switch from [A] to [B], Lets take [A] to be hot, and [B] to be cold. Please note that http://psych.hanover.edu... our skin has two types of receptors, one for hot and one for cold. Although I hate hyperlinks to make my point, I find it extremely interesting because in the example of hot and cold that I was suggesting there could be no real way to switch between the two sensations unless the stimuli, and therefore their method of construction was different. With this I think that we posses a highly sophisticated way to represent our world as "circular" although it is "singular".