Thomas Wulf replies to Karl Miler:

>... biology and linguistics have btw. Found that all thoughts are
>also triggering the larynx and are running there in parallel, albeit
>mute. no way to think without our larynx.  so thoughts are bound
>to language.

But are they bound to language because we already have language?  Is
there a way to measure these things in someone who has no language,
or can we even say that such a person thinks?  How would we know?

>PS: I'm still wondering why it is that I feel so much better about the
>idea of absolute music and still listen mainly to the other 'impure'
>type??  Maybe my heart just works better than my head?  ;-)

Perhaps these attitudes are historically or culturally determined.
After all, they seem to change over the centuries.  The notion of "pure"
music arose with 18th- and 19th-century Romanticism.  Before that, I
doubt that anybody worried their heads over the distinction, or if they
did, they came down decidedly in favor of "referential" music, as in the
case of the religious music of the Renaissance and the Baroque.

Steve Schwartz