Let's say I am negative about how the DMV handles my paperwork for whatever I need to dance through with them. I arrive "over prepared", just to be sure.
... and I arrive to find the DMV haplessly in worship of Saint Kafka.
By my negativity [distrusting an organization to do their job and have themselves together enough to tie their own shoes] I made the process better by arriving "over" prepared.
-- "the act of making your thoughts, feelings, etc., known by speech, writing, or some other method"
Notice the word "known" in the middle of this definition. Known by whom? The person expressing the ideas already knows them. Therefore by definition one is making oneself known to a second party, someone other than the speaker.
... and internal verbalization is also often considered as a form of expression ...
Not as the word is defined and commonly understood.
Sure you are. When speaking internally people set up a "mirror" of themselves, speaking as if to another person (despite any internal pronoun use like "I").
If someone yells something in the forest, they are speaking to, variously, a personification of nature, the world, a god, themselves (as described above), or perhaps more literally an imagined companion.
Expression is not about the effect but the intent, even if it's subconscious.
-- which doesn't have a widely accepted resolution. The tl;dr: arguing that another hypothetical person is present by reference to the mind, is a non-starter, except among psychologists.
Comments
Let's say I am negative about how the DMV handles my paperwork for whatever I need to dance through with them. I arrive "over prepared", just to be sure.
... and I arrive to find the DMV haplessly in worship of Saint Kafka.
By my negativity [distrusting an organization to do their job and have themselves together enough to tie their own shoes] I made the process better by arriving "over" prepared.
[deleted]
There's no mention of external in that definition though and internal verbalization is also often considered as a form of expression...
If you shout in the forest and nobody hears you; are you not still expressing your self?
No, because this fails the definition of "expressing yourself". An expression is defined as --
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/expression
-- "the act of making your thoughts, feelings, etc., known by speech, writing, or some other method"
Notice the word "known" in the middle of this definition. Known by whom? The person expressing the ideas already knows them. Therefore by definition one is making oneself known to a second party, someone other than the speaker.
Not as the word is defined and commonly understood.
Sure you are. When speaking internally people set up a "mirror" of themselves, speaking as if to another person (despite any internal pronoun use like "I").
If someone yells something in the forest, they are speaking to, variously, a personification of nature, the world, a god, themselves (as described above), or perhaps more literally an imagined companion.
Expression is not about the effect but the intent, even if it's subconscious.
Your explanation would require resolution of the mind-body problem --
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind%E2%80%93body_problem
-- which doesn't have a widely accepted resolution. The tl;dr: arguing that another hypothetical person is present by reference to the mind, is a non-starter, except among psychologists.