On May 12, 2008, at 3:36 PM, Derek Allan wrote:

Can
there be a thought without any way of embodying it  any way of
expressing it and marking it off from other thoughts?  Most
importantly, since we ordinarily express most of our thoughts in
words, can there be a wordless thought?

Dreams. In the dreams that I remember, there is never (or rarely) any
verbal component. They are all cinematic, moving or animated pictures,
scenes seen, with little sound and no dialogue (that I remember).

You are conflating two different mental activities, the thoughts that
one may have and the quite separate activity of describing those
thoughts to yourself, of knowing and being aware of your own thoughts.
That requires language to embody, not the thoughts per se, but the
propositional structure of knowing and analyzing the thoughts.


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Michael Brady
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

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