I wrote the following posting: Derek writes: "On the other hand how do we know what the thing is until we have found words to describe it? Are there wordless thoughts? I don't think so."
[For openers, I'd like to hear you describe what you have in mind with the phrase "what the thing IS". [Meantime, I suspect you'll respond to Mando that pain is not a thought. Or love, or terror, or fatigue, or... [The assertion that all thought is in words is flat-out nonsense. [Writers struggle to choose the best words -- how could that be if their thoughts are in words? [How could you ever mis-speak yourself? [Rock-climbers, chefs, chess-players, even tennis-players -- they're thinking all the time, just not with words. [But then you, like Hannah Arendt, may resort to a circular justification for the assertion that all thinking is in words: "What those people are doing -- the chefs and chess players, and Mozart while composing, and painters while painting, et al -- it isn't thinking." "Why not?" "Because thinking requires words, silly!"] Derek now answers: [Cheerskep writes in part: 'Writers struggle to choose the best words -- how could that be if their thoughts are in words?' [I think the answer is they struggle precisely because the thought only emerges fully once they sense the best words have been found. Until then, it is a kind of embryo of a thought. 'Crime and Punishment' is in a sense just one thought - which needed all those words to fully reveal itself. Dostoyevsky was not writing down a pre-thought 'language-less' idea - like an amanuensis putting someone else's ideas on paper. He was exploring - discovering - his thought, as he wrote. [Like all artists. I think we all do much the same in everyday life in a less developed way. [Wordless thoughts would be like 'a painter' who had never painted anything.] In this posting I'll comment only about the specifics of Derek's answer. In the next posting, I'll remark about his answer in general. "They struggle precisely because the thought only emerges fully once they sense the best words have been found. Until then, it is a kind of embryo of a thought." Then how does the writer know when the words he's mulling do not articulate his thought? Obviously the thought already has to be there. To use William's image, the writer already has the foot (the thought), now he has to find the shoe (the words) that fit. And how do you accommodate the fact that some writers do NOT struggle? A thought comes to them, and they immediately "jot it down". As I'm writing the short paragraphs you're now reading, these thoughts are coming to me in effect instantly. I then begin the time-consuming task of "putting them into words". Look at my two-line paragraph above beginning, "Then how doesb&" I knew instantly what I wanted to "say". Finding the word to say it took time. I mulled the words 'mulling', and 'articulate'. "Will they convey what's on my mind?" I asked myself. The "what's on my mind" was already there. Recall that one of the four characteristics of human notion is that it's transitory. As we "think about" our idea, we refine it, or change it basically as we see it doesn't square with other convictions of ours. Looking for the words to articulate what's on our mind is a happy aid to forcing us to "think about our thought". But the thoughts always precede the words. And they persist as thoughts without words until we find the words. What you call "the embryo of a thought" is merely a STAGE of thought. Calling a notion an "embryo of a thought" suggests it's not a thought yet. But it is. It may change, but it's equally a thought at every stage. To say that "THE" thought "emerges" is wrong. It is merely succeeded by another thought. In physics, string theory has changed and changed, and now it seems about to die. But most thinkers would say it was a thought at every stage. You say: "'Crime and Punishment' is in a sense just one thought - which needed all those words to fully reveal itself. Dostoyevsky was not writing down a pre-thought 'language-less' idea - like an amanuensis putting someone else's ideas on paper. He was exploring - discovering - his thought, as he wrote." I think Dostoievsky would rebel at your assertion 'C&P' is "just one thought". And I guarantee that, at each turn, his notion of what he wanted the next sentence, or scene, or the whole novel to "say" preceded his choosing the words to say it. Writing down an "a pre-thought (i.e. already-thought) 'language-less' idea" is precisely what Dos was doing. His thought did not "need words to reveal itself" -- maybe to readers, but not to Dos. You mistake his THINKING UP THE WORDS to "say" the thoughts FOR THINKING UP THE THOUGHTS he wanted to say. How conceivably could he be searching for words unless he already knew what he wanted them to say? Again: finding the right words forces us to focus on the thought, and sometimes that makes us refine or alter the thought. It can make us "think about our thought", but we won't choose the final words until after we've decided the thought finally. I am into the dictionary and thesaurus perhaps ten times a day, even at my age. I do it because I have a fairly firm grip on a notion, and I want to find the most serviceable words to "say" it. I can try literally dozens of sentences to articulate a notion I have in mind -- and throw them all out because I realize each of them fails to put into words the notion I have in mind. Derek concludes with: "Wordless thoughts would be like 'a painter' who had never painted anything." This, by equating thinking with writing, assumes the very point at issue. I leave it to the visual artists on the forum to respond to the implication that if they don't verbalize every part of their work, they are painting as thoughtlessly as rain-drops on your windows pane. ************** Wondering what's for Dinner Tonight? Get new twists on family favorites at AOL Food. 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