My original posting about "wordless thoughts" was this:
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!"]
I'd claim the posting contains at least six challenges to Derek's position.
Unfortunately it is typical of Derek to hunt solely for something he can
disagree with, and ignore all stubbornly immovable counter-arguments. The only
challenge he tried to rebut was:
"Writers struggle to choose the best words -- how could that be if their
thoughts are in words?"
And I feel my last posting persuasively showed his rebuttal fails.
Meantime, Mando has nicely supplemented my inventory of thoughtful but
wordless activities:
"Derek, in the use of paint or clay, to achieve any abstract design, does one
have to use words? Does one have to think of words while whistling? Do
dancers have to think of words while dancing? Or playing a flute?"
I can imagine Derek's responding that the thoughts "emerge" only when put
into words. Until that happens, there are no thoughts, no thinking has taken
place. So if the painter, sculptor. hummer-whistler, dancer, musician,
rock-climber, chess-player, tennis-player, et al never articulates in words
what's in
his mind during his activity, he is not thinking -- according to Derek. I do
think that's a warped notion of "thought".
This may be the playwright in me: The truth is, what interests me here as
much as the text of the argument is Derek's mind. He clearly has a certain kind
of sharp intelligence -- his frequent good, hard questions show that. But I
find it fascinating how his mind refuses hurdles. He reminds me of me when I
was
very young. I remember once at a party I'd clearly dug myself a polemic hole
out of which I should not have been allowed to escape. But with feints,
counter-charges, seizing on minor errors in the other guys' arguments, I got
away. A
smart young woman remarked to me afterwards, "You do have a nimble mind." I
fully recognized the remark as the deserved condemnation she intended. My ego
was damned if it would accept being exposed as having made a mistake. An awful
corollary was that it meant denying myself the chance to learn something.
Derek's recent response to Mando's citing painters, sculptors.
hummer-whistlers, dancers, musicians, as people who are clearly harboring
thoughts without
words, is so objectionable it deserves its own posting, which will follow.
The notion that Beethoven, that great reviser -- with constant improvement --
of his scores, was not "thinking" because he wasn't articulating his
considerations in words -- that's a notion that strikes me as deeply absurd.
Derek
refuses to concede it so. Why? I think Dostoievsky would have fun with Derek as
a
character.
**************
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