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Dear filmosophers - Among the many paths to 'thought' that have been mentioned, I was reminded of another by Ross' rumination on 'speaking thought': namely, Paul Willemen's exploration of the concept of 'inner speech' and its applicability to cinema. (Let me add that I also agree that we cannot limit thought to linguistic acts and functions: yes, there is sensual thought, muscular thought, etc ... ) Anyone want to jump in on inner speech? Thinking about Willemen took me back to a special book that perhaps is not as well known as it should be among the members of this list: the Australian publication FILM AND MEANING by Ian Douglas (Continuum, 1988). The author tragically died at 40, and this was the PhD he left behind. Stanley Cavell examined it and commented that he had "never received a PhD dissertation of the magnitude of ambition and the exhaustiveness of execution of Ian Douglas". And it has a chapter on inner speech, as well as great stuff like 'Reduction and Possible Worlds' and 'The Fugitive Fictive'. Worth hunting down. It also occurred to me that we are in danger (in our recent discussions) of always 'subjectivising' thought - a character's thought, the auteur's thought, your and my thought - although I realise that, in the everyday world, you and I do have thoughts, hopefully! - when really, one of the great and inspiring things about Deleuze's cinema books is that he NEVER subjectivises thought, he militantly refuses to do that. Thoughts are things that pass through 'crystals', not persons, not our personalised 'imaginaries'! Things like perception-images, affection-images, etc, do not 'belong' to any one 'thinking mind' (whether of director or character or even viewer) in the Deleuzian system. Even when he talks of 'cinema as brain' in Kubrick and so on, that's something quite other to the business of 'thinking thoughts'. And although I am not entirely sure I fully understand Deleuze on this crystal/virtual/immanent level, I do think it captures something sublimely wonderful about cinema and maybe art in general: cinema is the place where thoughts ESCAPE our heads or anybody's heads, where they form imaginary worlds or bridgings independently of our will. What was the great thing that Norman O. Brown said in the 60s? "The solution to the problem of identity is - get lost". Movies allow our thoughts to get lost, to get free of us. Often a good thing! I have noodled around this issue in the short version of an essay called "The Ever-Tested Limit" which appeared in another obscure Australian book publication called VALUE ADDED GOODS (Centre for Contemporary Photography, 2001), but it surely needs a team effort ... Adrian