[lit-ideas] Re: Do ideas exist before being articulated?
- From: "Julie Krueger" <juliereneb@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 02:29:27 -0500
I agree completely that it makes very good sense (and interesting from an
ontological perspective). When I write, my writing informs me, I learn from
it, I recognize, realize, notions that were hitherto hidden from me,
invisible. I learn more from my free-style writing than I do from logical
thought and serious introspection. However. I have claimed for a very long
time (decades) that ideas precede language -- in that if you were a deaf
person on a desert island, washed ashore as an infant, never meeting a
speaking person, you would develop a code of sorts -- a language -- a series
of grunts or calls or whatever -- that would match threatening
sea-creatures, edible food, danger, pleasure, etc.
That is -- whether or not I have the word "red" or "rouge" or "roja" or
"edray" in my vocabulary -- I still recognize the color when I see it. If
I'm able to articulate to another human being what it is that I can see is
another matter -- particularly problematic as I have no real way of knowing
whether what I am seeing bears any resemblance at all to what the other
person is seeing in terms of their experiential cognitive processing.
Perhaps you are referring to a rather particular, specific
private-language.
Again -- why cannot both models be valid??
Rambling, I am, at 2:30 a.m.
Julie Krueger
On 10/15/07, John McCreery <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> The question is whether there is an idea already existing but in need
> of expression or an idea whose existence depends on its being
> expressed. The latter may sound strange; but if you have worked, as I
> have, in a creative business, watching ideas take shape as copywriters
> come up with words and art directors visualize them, it makes a lot of
> sense.
>
> John
>
> On 10/15/07, Julie Krueger <juliereneb@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > This doesn't look like such an enormous dichotomy to me. Why must it be
> an
> > "either/or" scenario? A dialogue, conversation, between the idea and
> the
> > linguistic, where each informs the other?
> >
> > Julie Krueger
> >
> >
> > On 10/14/07, John McCreery <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > >
> > > Pondering the conversation about what goes on before we speak, I note
> > > that two possibilities are in play.
> > >
> > > 1. Classical--We possess ideas of which we are partly or wholly
> > > unaware until they are spoken. Cf. Plato, Leibniz (rebutting Locke),
> > > Chomsky, Freud.
> > >
> > > 2. Modern--Ideas only emerge as we speak them. What goes on inside us
> > > is a confluence of pre-linguistic processes that crystallize at the
> > > moment we speak. Cf. Vico, Minsky,Klein a good deal of current
> > > research in such fields as psychology and political science that
> > > indicates that processes conventionally described as "emotional"
> > > proceed those described as "rational," which turn out, more often than
> > > not, to be after the fact rationalizations of decisions already made.
> > >
> > > John
> > >
> > > --
> > > John McCreery
> > > The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
> > > Tel. +81-45-314-9324
> > > http://www.wordworks.jp/
> > >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------
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> >
> >
>
>
> --
> John McCreery
> The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
> Tel. +81-45-314-9324
> http://www.wordworks.jp/
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> To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
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