Peter Kosenko
---------- Original Message ---------------------------------- From: Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> Reply-To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com Date: Wed, 08 Aug 2001 18:17:31 -0500
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>Doug Henwood wrote:
>>
>>
>> This is a hoax, right? Someone's hacked your email account, right?
>
>:-)
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>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.
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>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.
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>Carrol
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