ABSTRACT
Noncognitive utterances can be utilized for manipulative or predictive advantage—but it should be clear that noncognitive language cannot be itself employed to make knowledge claims. One can systematically study noncognitive language, make a variety of characterizing knowledge claims concerning its use, the occasions for its employment, its relationship to a system of socially sanctioned norms. The familiar linguistic products of “faith,” “imagination,” “phantasy,” and “intuition” are at best interstitial with respect to the cognitive and noncognitive ranges of discourse. This interpretation of “myth” seems to be, as a matter of fact, tacitly or explicitly accepted in contemporary discussions of political motivation. Ideologies, in general, and myths as special cases, can be understood to perform the same noncognitive political and social functions in at least one respect. Mythic or doctrinal language is the most perverse form of noncognitive discourse—because those who invoke it are prepared to have us pay the price of its use.
