Doug Henwood wrote:
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> This is a hoax, right? Someone's hacked your email account, right?
:-)
But what is your answer to the question in my subject line? I would maintain that there is no way to avoid an answer which sees thought as beginning in non-thought -- i.e., that motion precedes thought? When did you have your first thought? When did you first say to youself, "I can speak?" Quite a bit of non-speaking behavior preceded that.
Susanne Langer, in _Philosophy in a New Key_ (circa 1941 -- she was a follower of Whitehead and Cassirer) argued that the question as to the origin of languages (at that time regarded as an illegitimate question) might be answered, and she suggested that ritual preceded language, with language originating then in sounds which to begin with were only accompaniments to ritual. In other words, anyone who seriously starts thinking about how thought begins has to find that beginning in motion which was not itself thought.
Which brings me back to an earlier post on Habermas, in which I argued that he, Ken and Kelley were essentially engaging in the history of ideas, a discipline which obscures the origins of thinking in action. Thoughts just come from other thoughts.
Carrol