Full Idea
We must still insist that some degree of abstraction, and even a very considerable degree of it, is present in sign-cognition, pre-verbal as it is. ...To us, who are familiar with northern winters, the ice actually looks cold.
Gist of Idea
There is pre-verbal sign-based abstraction, as when ice actually looks cold
Source
H.H. Price (Thinking and Experience [1953], Ch.IV)
Book Reference
Price,H.H.: 'Thinking and Experience' [Hutchinson 1953], p.98
A Reaction
Price may be in the weak position of doing armchair psychology, but something like his proposal strikes me as correct. I'm much happier with accounts of thought that talk of 'degrees' of an activity, than with all-or-nothing cut-and-dried pictures.