Steve Schwartz wrote:

>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?

Helen Keller was blind and deaf from the age of 19 months.  Her language
skills were probably not well developed at that age.

Yet, as she developed, it was clear she had thoughts.  Were those thoughts
only there as she developed a sense of language.  I think not.

>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.

"Pure" or "absolute" music, is, for me, much in the line of thought of
"pure thought," pure thought unencumbered by the limitations of what we
can verbalize and see...or is there such a "thing."

In the instance of "referential" music...that has always seemed such an
odd notion to me.  When I do find a composition with a specific "story
line" I can hear how the composer might have made some reference to
specific events, as in a ballet, yet, if the music makes musical sense
to me, the story is inconsequential.  It seems to me that when I find I
need a literary narrative to appreciate a piece of music, I think less
of the piece.

Karl