Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature: Thirtieth-Anniversary Edition (Princeton Classics)

by Richard Rorty

It is just to have pain. The snare to avoid here is the notion that there is some inner illumination which takes place only when the child’s mind is lighted up by language, concepts, descriptions, and propositions, and does not take place when the child inarticulately wails and writhes. The child feels the same thing, and it feels just the same to him before and after language-learning. Before language, he is said to know the thing he feels just in case it is the sort of thing which in later life he will be able to make noninferential reports about. That latent ability is what sets him apart from the photoelectric cell, not his greater sensitivity. Thus he may respond directly to a lack of oxygen in the air, the overly rapid motion of molecules, kinky alpha-rhythms in his brain, and so on, but he is not said to “know what they are” unless and until he comes to grasp the relevant vocabulary. But suffocation, heat, ecstasy, pain, fire, redness, parental hostility, mother love, hunger, loudness, and the like, are “known” pre-linguistically, or so ordinary speech would have it. They are known just by being had or felt. They are known without being able to be placed in classes, or related in any other way to anything else.

November 16, 2020. Page 184. Kinky.