Verbs and Nouns

[Ierrellus]

Years ago I was intrigued by Thomas Szasz's idea that mind is a verb. Recently, however, I've read a psychotherapist who takes Szasz's concept, IMHO, a bit too literally. Glasser, a psychotherapist of some renown, claims that using a noun instead of a verb when explaining a diagnosis of mental illness is inaccurate, misleading or downright wrong. Instead of saying that a person suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder, Glasser describes his clients with this dis-order as obsessing and compulsing. Perhaps he adopts the Szasz concept in order to avoid the generic aspect of noun diagnoses or to show that what is happening with his clients is a here and now, ongoing malfunction.
I'm interested in the noun/verb distinction for other reasons. In philosophy verb discriptions may be the closest one can get to describing ontological experiences. That being said, I see noun descriptions as a necessary complement to these in that they represent plateaus of development, bridges across streams of flux, solid grounds for advancements of creative adapations into possibilty and probality.

[jonquil]

Interesting idea. Also consider: mind as a transitive verb would be a player in the teleologic active world; mind as an intransitive verb maybe not. The question: would it be one or the other, or both . . . .

[Ierrellus]

Interesting idea. Also consider: mind as a transitive verb would be a player in the teleologic active world; mind as an intransitive verb maybe not. The question: would it be one or the other, or both . . . .

Thanks, Jonquil,
I'd say both in complementation. From old English we have retained words that are both nouns and verbs, , "milk" (milch). We still use gerunds. I'm interested in your comment about "intransitive" verbs. IMHO, they may stem from our experience of being while transitive verbs may be translations of our experience of change or becoming. Much philosophy, based on 20th century analytics, suggests that when one delves into realms of consciousness that are preverbal, ontological experiences cannot be described in terms of meaning and value. For me this sort of philosophical cutoff of natural processes ignores underpinnings of meaning and value and their evolution into verbal descriptions.
Brain is verb in producing thought; it is noun in homeostasis.

[jonquil]

From old English we have retained words that are both nouns and verbs, , "milk" (milch). We still use gerunds. I'm interested in your comment about "intransitive" verbs. IMHO, they may stem from our experience of being while transitive verbs may be translations of our experience of change or becoming. Much philosophy, based on 20th century analytics, suggests that when one delves into realms of consciousness that are preverbal, ontological experiences cannot be described in terms of meaning and value. For me this sort of philosophical cutoff of natural processes ignores underpinnings of meaning and value and their evolution into verbal descriptions.
Brain is verb in producing thought; it is noun in homeostasis.

Speaking of the pre-conscious life of the individual, what do you think of Maritain's idea that creativity springs from that source .. that it derives from the pre-conscious mind? I've always found that notion fascinating, but it sort of defies language to explain it, including verbs.

(Ref: Creativity and Intuition by Jacques Maritain)

[Ierrellus]

From old English we have retained words that are both nouns and verbs, , "milk" (milch). We still use gerunds. I'm interested in your comment about "intransitive" verbs. IMHO, they may stem from our experience of being while transitive verbs may be translations of our experience of change or becoming. Much philosophy, based on 20th century analytics, suggests that when one delves into realms of consciousness that are preverbal, ontological experiences cannot be described in terms of meaning and value. For me this sort of philosophical cutoff of natural processes ignores underpinnings of meaning and value and their evolution into verbal descriptions.
Brain is verb in producing thought; it is noun in homeostasis.

Speaking of the pre-conscious life of the individual, what do you think of Maritain's idea that creativity springs from that source .. that it derives from the pre-conscious mind? I've always found that notion fascinating, but it sort of defies language to explain it, including verbs.

(Ref: Creativity and Intuition by Jacques Maritain)

I think Maritain is right. That idea squares with our creative adaptational possibilities. I think it was Pinker who came up with the absurd notion that language precedes consciousness. In our preverbal experiences we are still very conscious. We just can't talk about it. Creativity is an adaptational plus.

[Ierrellus]

From old English we have retained words that are both nouns and verbs, , "milk" (milch). We still use gerunds. I'm interested in your comment about "intransitive" verbs. IMHO, they may stem from our experience of being while transitive verbs may be translations of our experience of change or becoming. Much philosophy, based on 20th century analytics, suggests that when one delves into realms of consciousness that are preverbal, ontological experiences cannot be described in terms of meaning and value. For me this sort of philosophical cutoff of natural processes ignores underpinnings of meaning and value and their evolution into verbal descriptions.
Brain is verb in producing thought; it is noun in homeostasis.

Speaking of the pre-conscious life of the individual, what do you think of Maritain's idea that creativity springs from that source .. that it derives from the pre-conscious mind? I've always found that notion fascinating, but it sort of defies language to explain it, including verbs.

(Ref: Creativity and Intuition by Jacques Maritain)

I think Maritain is right. That idea squares with our creative adaptational possibilities. I think it was Pinker who came up with the absurd notion that language precedes consciousness. In our prevebal experiences we are still very conscious. Creativity is an adaptational plus
Thanks for the reference.

[Ierrellus]

Jonquil,
I'll search our library system for Maritain's "Creative Intution in Art and Poetry" (1953). From the brief article I read, written by one of his biographers, Joseph W. Evans, I find Maritain and I are on the same page philosophically. What I would describe as preverbal, ontological underpinnings of creative expression (in the land of pure verbs) and would relegate to potentials within genetic evolution Maritain describes as existential intuitions.
I agree so far with him that the mathematical/mechanical desriptions of human experience, although pragmatically necessary in some situations , do not fully explain or explore the essences of such human experiences as creativity. I will not agree if I find him splitting subjective and objective takes on experiential reality.

[jonquil]

Jonquil,
I'll search our library system for Maritain's "Creative Intution in Art and Poetry" (1953). From the brief article I read, written by one of his biographers, Joseph W. Evans, I find Maritain and I are on the same page philosophically. What I would describe as preverbal, ontological underpinnings of creative expression (in the land of pure verbs) and would relegate to potentials within genetic evolution Maritain describes as existential intuitions.
I agree so far with him that the mathematical/mechanical desriptions of human experience, although pragmatically necessary in some situations , do not fully explain or explore the essences of such human experiences as creativity. I will not agree if I find him splitting subjective and objective takes on experiential reality.

I have the book and it's very good. You should have no trouble getting it through ILL.

What you're saying reminds me of the way humans started out representing the world and the psyche symbolically. I love the ancient rock and cave stuff. Also, does any of this tie in with "participation mystique" for you? I'm thinking that there could be a way that participation mystique plays an important part in the preconscious decisions that influence what is actually drawn or written.

[Ierrellus]

Our ILL located Maritain's book and is sending it to me. Meanwhile I'm reading Rollo May's "The Cry for Myth" (1991). May, like Jung, finds that myth provides the primal narrative about existential awareness. May, however, leans too heavily toward blaming the predominance of logical/analytic thought for the dearth of sustaining myth. That, IMHO, is a decent observation so long as it sees the problem with techno-logic as due to preference of emphasis, not as due to some conflict between our creative/spiritual expressions and our rational/logical expressions. Both ways of seeing are necessary, while neither by itself is sufficient.

[Ierrellus]

Jonquil,
I read about half of Maritain's book and was too turned off by the Aquinas reprise and insistence on using such vague metaphysical terms as "abstraction" and "transcendence" to continue. He seems caught between metaphysics as some indicator of "absolutes" and "certainties" and metaphysics as an extension of physics. Where I found his ideas valuable, for me at least, was in his expression of subconscious essences of both reason and aesthetic appreciation. Also, his defense of structure as essential for articulation/communication was good.
Absolutes and certainties are ideas formed in describing the experience of homeostasis, but they are not ideas that can actually, beyond their power to provide incentives, be seen as any Rosetta Stone for translating mental goings on. The creative urge is a verb. It is dynamic, not static. Nouns are plateaus in the processes of mental/emotional development. They are not anything more than stepping stones in the river of flux.

[Banjofrog]

Is love a verb?

[Ierrellus]

Is love a verb?

Welcome!!!
IMHO, love is a verb as experience and a noun as description. I prefer the former; but, I do not not see description as something divorced from experience. Talking about love is also an experience that may enhance the feelings of vital connections.

[brevel_monkey]

Brain is verb in producing thought; it is noun in homeostasis.

How is 'brain' a verb?

I was braining last night? I will brain tomorrow? Have you (whatever the hell the V3 form of 'brain' is) yet?

The creative urge is a verb

'Creative urge' is a noun.

Nouns are plateaus in the processes of mental/emotional development. They are not anything more than stepping stones in the river of flux.

Rubbish. 'noun' is just a part of speech. They can happily refer to things which are always changing (e.g. 'the processes of mental/emotional development')

[Ierrellus]

BM,
You have just pitched out the last 50 years of philosophy and, consequently, have shown no understanding of the terms and their uses as articulated here. Please puke elsewhere!

[brevel_monkey]

In my defense, I don't think I've 'pitched out' everything from the last 50 years. I think that was a little OTT, TBH.

The point, though, was that the distinctions between nouns and verbs are basically purely syntactical. Although classical definitions describe verbs as referring to actions or states and nouns as referring to things, closer analysis has obsoleted this view. Facts seem to be that the only method of distinction is syntactic, semantically there is no viable way to distinguish them.

Instead of saying that a person suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder, Glasser describes his clients with this dis-order as obsessing and compulsing. Perhaps he adopts the Szasz concept in order to avoid the generic aspect of noun diagnoses or to show that what is happening with his clients is a here and now, ongoing malfunction.

I can't see how it really serves either of these purposes: because the verb description seems to me to say the same thing as the noun description. It is just as generic, and both signify equally that the condition is ongoing at the time of diagnosis.