User:KYPark/1923/Ogden/chapter01

We live a cognitive life by virtue of ideas in mind about things. That might be good enough in a way. To be better off in another, however, we express and exchange some ideas by means of words. Anyway, ideas in mind is ahead of words in hand, as it were, as a means. Or, some ideas without words, but no words without ideas. That is to say, ideas in mind matter first and foremost; words in hand simply follow.

In this cognitive perspective or "intentional stance" (Daniel Dennett, 1987), Henry James (1905) might have better said:
 * "All life comes back to the question of our ideas -- the medium through which we relates words to things, ill or well." (focused on ideas in mind) than:
 * "All life comes back to the question of our speech -- the medium through which we communicate with each other; for all life comes back to the question of our relations with each other." (focused on words in hand).

Analogously, after admitting, "The old idea that words possess magical powers is false; but its falsity is the distortion of a very important truth," Aldous Huxley (1940) would have better said:
 * "Minds are magical in the way they have ideas affected by words they use." (focused on ideas in mind) than:
 * "Words are magical in the way they affect the minds of those who use them." (focused on words in hand).

We are so surprised and perplexed by both good and evil the same speech we communicate does to each of us.