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What is thinking A primer

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holisticelephants

March 8, 2019

What is thinking? A primer

We all know what thinking is until we start thinking about it! (If you can get hold of them, the 4-5
papers by Gilbert Ryle on ‘thinking’ will show you that thinking is not what we usually think it is.)

I want to give you a very different view of thinking; different to both our everyday ideas and to
psychology and philosophy.

Thinking originates outside of you; it is determined or controlled outside of you.

Weird huh?

Let’s give it a go, because it makes a lot of human phenomena easier to understand, especially those
clinical issues labelled as ‘thought disorders’ or hearing voices.

I will start with seeing, then talking, and finally get to thinking.

The eyes; what do we see?

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Let’s start with seeing as a comparison. What does our perception, seeing or vision deal with? Easy
answer, seeing is about everything we see. We see books and chairs, fields and lilies, and trees, we
see large lakes, and we see concrete buildings and old grey carpets.

Our experience of seeing is filled up all these things in our environments. Our seeing happens from
things out there. Seeing originates from the world itself.

[Caveat 1. Many of the old philosophers and most current psychologists believe that we do not see
things out there. We ‘see’ our brain’s built model or representation of what is out there, but we do
not directly see things. They claim that all we can know comes from the light hi ing the retina and
further claim that that is not enough to see all the three-dimensional and rich things out there.
Piffle! J.J. Gibson showed: (1) that there is more than enough in the environment for us to see; (2)
there is amazing richness in the light arrays when we are moving around and moving our heads so
we do not need ‘internal’ models of it all; (3) psychologists only study non-moving retinas and heads
so all this richness out there is lost and it wrongly seems that we need to “go beyond the information
given”; and (4) we do not ‘see objects’ or ‘take in information’ anyway; instead, seeing is about
differentiating between the rich arrays on our retinas and behaving differently when there are
complex differences; we do not build models of the world from ‘taking in’ light. Your plants turn
their leaves and move them to face the sun without building internal representations of it all]

Language; what do we hear spoken and see written?

Where does all our language come from? Just like seeing, what gets said and thought comes directly
from the rich worlds in which we engage: but our linguistic, discursive or language worlds. Since
shortly after birth we have been immersed in complex language all around us. This is mainly from
people talking, then from books, and then from hearing recorded and digitized writing and talking.
We do not need to build up models of language and conversations around us before we can speak
and think. Like the “direct perception” of Gibson, we directly engage in language with people as we
shape each other.

You need to get the idea that we all have had a constant and continuing blathering of language, often
different bits simultaneously, ever since birth. Us being immersed in language is like a fish being immersed
in water. I also compare it to the thousands of high frequency waves from mobile phones which are
now all around us all the time even though we cannot see them. When your phones are tuned in
correctly, they behave differentially to these waves. Like we are tuned into certain words and
conversations and people.

We now live in a sea of words. Almost everything we notice gets said by someone, unless we say it
first; there are words for everything we have learned to identify; there are are critical comments we
can make about almost anything in the world around us; there are jokes we can make about almost
any situation we are in; there are complaints we can make about any situation we see or experience;
we can say explanations for anything we observe happening.

Language has been all around us, and you need to get the gut feeling that language has been vitally
important to running our lives since an early age, in absolutely everything we do! Using language is
perhaps even more important than seeing the things which are around us. There are a lot of situations
in which words get priority over observations. We can see chocolate in front of us but our parents’
words we have heard many times are more powerful! Ok, not always…

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Language is (truly) social

The next bit of the puzzle is that we only get language from our people-environments. A cat cannot
get us to say “cat”; saying “look at me” to a tree is a useless activity; we cannot get a chair to move
backwards with our words; and what a waste of time is it telling a rat not to eat chocolate.

In a similar way to our eyes being useless at seeing ultraviolet waves, language is useless except with
people, and actually, only those people who have also suffered through years and years of learning
the same language as you. You cannot get speakers of other languages to do things using your words
alone. Try these things I am saying out yourself to get the experience for what I am saying. Yes, try
telling your chair what to do. You will learn something useful about language.

What can language do in the world?

We already know that language can do nothing without people. A good start, but you must learn to
see this happening in your world and get a strong feel for it. The last step in language is this: a
language can only do things, have consequential effects in your worlds, with people.

We use language only to do things to people. The main things we do, put abstractly, are (1) to make
them do something, and (2) to help form and manage our social relationships with each other.

In simple situations we might just need to say (1) “Can you help me with this?” and (2) “You’re the
best!” But in situations where these are difficult or there are conflicts then there will be a lot of
cha er and far too many words, trying to do these two broad pa erns. Think abut (1) ge ing
someone to give you money and (2) ge ing a stranger to like you. Elsewhere I have gone through a
lot of literature about the actual complex language strategies humans use to do things to each other
(nice as well as bad things).

How frequently is this talking stuff happening in our lives?

Basically, all the time. Our lives are filled with talking and we do almost everything that we do in
this world by talking. Yes, a lot!

If we go to a deserted place for a long time, we notice that things are changed with us. Like draining
the fish bowl of water, except that we do not (usually) die of ‘no one to talk with’. But it can be
unpleasant, and certainly dis-empowering. Or try si ing facing a friend for 30 minutes without
talking. Try going for a day without saying anything out loud. Try going for a day not listening to
anyone (headphones on without music).

Finally, we get to thinking!

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We can talk without people being there. Typically, this occurs when there is:

a complex or conflictual life situation

important or consequential things needing to be done, and these could be for good things as well
as bad
an important bit of conversation we did not get to say in front of people (many reasons for this,
see more below)
a bit of conversation happens after the person is gone

We typically do not say these out loud all by ourselves because it seems weird if someone sees us
(gets punished). But sometimes you might come upon someone who is still ranting out loud about a
bad situation which occurred, and they might then rant out loud at you even though you were not
involved. It could also be a good and powerful situation, “I just have to tell someone about the magic
concert I saw last night!”

So, as well as all our talking out loud, the very same language bits of conversations (“conversational
snippets”, I like to call them) occur when no one is there, but most of these we do not say out loud.
This is thinking. Finding out all the conditions for this happening is the study of thinking.
Changing those conditions of language is the therapy for problem thinking and talking which is
messing up your life.

[Caveat 2. Most philosophers, psychologists and everyday people believe that thinking occurs inside
of us. This is a mistake but an understandable one. Thinking is the talking which is not said out loud
and when the audiences for that talking are not even there. When someone in front of me tells me I
am a liar, I might yell or scream something at them. It is clear to us that the person in front (and
what they said) is originating my tactless language which follows. But later on, because this is a
conflictual event, I might find myself ‘thinking’ bits about this episode and bits of conversation I
never said. This is why I say that thinking originates outside of you even though it seems to arise from
‘within’. But to the observer who did not see the original events, this seems to be thinking occurring
‘inside’ me with no connection to the ‘outside’ world. And often we are the ‘observer’ noticing our
thinking but we cannot see where it came from, so we learn to ‘own it’ as coming from within us.
Big mistake but understandable.]

[Caveat 3. In modern life where we deal with strangers all the time, and competition for money and
capital, there is a lot of competitiveness and therefore a lot of language strategies to make you stand
out. This means that a lot of our talking to people is also about (1) competing to be right and (2)
standing out. So, when we examine western people’s thinking, most people in western societies have
a strong ‘critical voice’ as one main part of their thinking. That is, they have a lot of talking in terms of
competitiveness and being critical which appears as thinking because most of it is not said out loud.
This is seen a lot in therapy and dealing with thinking issues. Your first thought about anything new
is usually critical or competitive.]

[Caveat 4. Our common ways of talking about thinking imply that ‘we’ come up with our thoughts.
Who is this ‘we’? A be er everyday way of talking is that all thoughts ‘pop into our heads’.
Thoughts just arise or come to us, we do not sit down and think about what our next thought is
going to be! Try it! The trick is that while the thoughts certainly ‘pop’, a be er phrase would be ‘our
thoughts pop up’, or ‘our thoughts pop out of our linguistic/ discursive worlds’. These get rid of the
idea that because we cannot see thoughts (1) they must be in our head, and (2) we choose or decide to
have our thoughts in the first place. If you are puzzled about the ‘we’, see my other blogs. Who is
this metaphorical ‘we’?

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What do we think about?

We think about all those things we might talk about to other people in any sort of social relationship
with us, friend or stranger. But as above for talking, there is usually extra thinking (talking,
conversation) about: complex and conflictual life situations; important or consequential things which
need to be done (for good things as well as bad); bits of conversation we did not get to say in front of
people (many reasons for this); or bits of conversation which happen after the person is gone.

An audience for thinking? Whatever are you thinking?

Looking at thinking in this way, thinking, like any uses of language, has audiences and social
situations out of which they arise (even if the thoughts/talk come later and not out loud). Thinking
only arises from language exchanges doing things to people. So, there are audiences for thinking.
And here is the strangest twist:

The audience for thinking is not the thinker!

‘We’ do not think in order for ‘us’ to ‘hear’ or react to what ‘we’ think. We think for those people
around us who are or have been part of our language worlds, just the same as we talk for those
around us who are or have been part of our language worlds. Thinking is just one part of all our
talking and managing our social relationships, but not necessarily with these people present nor out
loud.

[Caveat 5. Elsewhere I go through many of the contexts when we do not say things out loud, some of
which might be our later thinking. These are complex but interesting in themselves, because
knowing that you ‘thought some talking’ rather than you saying it out loud, can give you really
interesting clues as to how you run your life and what is actually important to you. Sometimes
things we might have said will be punished so we do not say them (like any behaviour, not just
language use). If these bits were important to our relationships (and the fact they would have been
punished is a clue they are!) then that talking is likely to ‘pop out of our world’ later on as a thought.
You can learn a lot about yourself if you notice this! When it does, it is just the talking we might have
done but now without that punishing audience present. Sometimes, of course, we do not finish
conversations just because time runs out or the person has to leave. You can still get good clues
about how you run your life and what is important to you by noticing immediately and later what
thoughts pop out at you. If you are still thinking about that conversation (or something said on tv
even), then there is some importance to it you might want to explore. Which is partly what Freud
tried to do.]

So, your thoughts have audiences whom you are not currently addressing in person, and discovering
these and going over the real contexts for those thoughts is very useful in guiding your life—who are
they directed towards, why weren’t they said out loud, when might you say them out loud and to
whom?

The reality of how our thoughts are about addressing people can be observed by si ing quietly alone
(meditating?) and observing the thoughts which are being said in your world but not out loud.

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But the best way I found to learn from this was to sit in an hour-long Quaker Meeting in which 20-
100 people were si ing in total silence together. Having those persons actually there but not acting
as an audience gave me a whole new perspective that my thoughts which I observed were about
talking to audiences elsewhere. You literally ‘listen to your thoughts from the outside’ and because
they are unconnected to the persons present, so you can place them be er in the contexts of your
own life—where they fit in to all your social relationships. A different experience to meditating
alone

Conclusions

Out thinking is just one aspect of our everyday talking and other uses of language. Our talking is
labelled as ‘thinking’ when (1) our talking behaviour continues even though the listener is not there
and (2) when it is not said out loud for a number of reasons. The contexts for why these 2 conditions
are there are important for us to understand (“Why is this a thought I am having and not talking?”).
But thoughts are part of the same conversations and language interactions we have with people in
our life. These conversations and uses of language are always and constantly around us since an
early age. Thinking has most of the same properties as all our uses of language, therefore, but
without an actual audience so it misses out on the immediate shaping-in-conversation, which is one
reason why it seems different and seems private when it is not. As part of our normal and on-going
use of language to do things to people, thinking can do things to people because having been
thought, it has been said all the same. All the aspects of our talking and language-life make up a lot
of what we do in life now—most of what we do to people we do by using language.

Your task

You need to absorb all of this and then begin observing and examining very closely each of the
following (doing just one leads to mistakes):

the thoughts that pop out of the discursive worlds of your social relationships
the real-life contexts for those thoughts
the context for them not being said out loud, and whether this is important

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