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Topics - Légu

#1
Lurker here, finally brave enough to post something of my own. This forum is great!

To preface, I'm mostly talking about this from my point of view. For me, thought manifests itself as a 'voice' inside my head, or at the very least it manifests as language, made up of sentences. Of course, there can be other types of thinking, such as visually or perhaps with emotion. This makes me wonder - what are the implications of differences in thought production? Can one type be better, more efficient?

With some practice, I'm able to completely bypass language when thinking and am able to observe pure logic. I'll call this type of thinking 'unsymbolic thought', as opposed to internal dialogue, from an interesting BBC article on the subject[1]. I'll be mostly ignoring the other types of thought, only because I use them far less often.

I've discovered that without the need for forming sentences and articulating them, thoughts form much quicker. Whereas before the act of thinking was like a stream, without language it becomes more like waves of ideas with pauses between each thought. I do not yet know if this pause can eradicated with more practice. If it can, this could mean thinking can be incredibly quick. For now, unsymbolic thinking is more akin to meditation. Without the extra attention being paid to producing sentences, my focus goes elsewhere - usually my breath.

Another possible implication I considered was whether unsymbolic thought is possibly less biased than dialogue. I use bias fairly loosely, meaning the filters we apply to our thoughts and our judgement of them. It occurs to me that the medium of thought might dictate the logic of thought itself. That is, language is inherently rhetoric. By definition, it is intended to transfer ideas, not necessarily to understand or produce them. By continuously converting thought into language, I found that I'm persuading myself or an imaginary opponent. If this is so, then the ideas no longer are judged (internally) by how correct or logical they are, but rather by how persuasive they are. Hence the bias.

This of course may not be true, which brings up the question of where thought originates. Is thought inherently biased from the moment it is created or do we apply our filters after the ideas are produced? If the latter is correct, then we could create ideas contrary to what we believe in, but discard them (perhaps without even thinking) in processing the thought. Through some observation, I came to the conclusion that thought is produced subconsciously and that we interpret and process what comes up. Interestingly, it seems to me that this super-consciousness is almost like a separate entity that has little communication with the self. Of course, I cannot distinguish whether it's completely separate or merely a deeper part of my own self.

Another point may be when thought is developed. Are humans born with the ability for unsymbolic / logical thought? Does language develop in conjunction to thought, or after it? Do children have some sort of thought before being able to speak, or do they operate solely on instinct? This is why I hesitated to use the word 'sub-concsiousness' to describe the origin of thought, because instinct or biological programming can emulate thoughtful behaviour without needing the ability to think. We generally know, for example, insects don't have thoughts and any observed intelligent behaviour is merely a result of instinct and evolution - if this is the case, then at what point does 'instinct' and 'sub-consciousness' become 'thought' and 'super-consciousness'? These are much more complex questions.

Thoughts?

n.b., please forgive me if sub-conscious is not the correct word to describe unthoughtful instinctual behaviour. It was the only word I could think of. Or for that matter please excuse any other misused terms.

1) https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190819-what-your-inner-voice-says-about-you