A Brief Note, Re: Ethical foundations of the left

Shane Mage shmage at pipeline.com
Mon Jul 30 14:24:28 PDT 2001


Kenneth macKendrick wrote:


>Language is inherent to cognitive development. This is irrefutable.
>Linguistic interaction constitutes the medium of our capacity to
>understanding. This is irrefutable.

Aren't you here claiming that a person, born profoundly deaf into a non-literate village or hunting-gathering community, is permanently incapable of cognitive development? That such a person, even after a lifetime of performing adequately all the essential tasks and roles of communal life, understands nothing because of the inherent lack of any "capacity to understand?"

If you are indeed making such claims, what arguments can you provide to support them that are not viciously circular because language skills are already built into your operational definitions of the words "cognitive" and "understand?"

Shane Mage

"immortal mortals, mortal immortals, living their deaths, dying their lives"

Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 62



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list