Unsymbolized Thinking (UT)

[Anonymous No.11894324]

This is quite interesting /sci/. I'm sure by now you are all familiar with unsymbolized thinking- https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00216/full
>“thinking a particular, definite thought without the awareness of that thought's being conveyed in words, images, or any other symbols”

Now see what happens when someone, (who is a philosophy professor even) is unaware of this concept and possibility and comes up with his own theory of consciousness that is based around the ABSENCE of awareness of this modality of thought in the human mind.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/there-is-no-such-thing-as-conscious-thought/
>In ordinary life we are quite content to say things like “Oh, I just had a thought” or “I was thinking to myself.” By this we usually mean instances of inner speech or visual imagery, which are at the center of our stream of consciousness—the train of words and visual contents represented in our minds. I think that these trains are indeed conscious. In neurophilosophy, however, we refer to “thought” in a much more specific sense. In this view, thoughts include only nonsensory mental attitudes, such as judgments, decisions, intentions and goals. These are amodal, abstract events, meaning that they are not sensory experiences and are not tied to sensory experiences. Such thoughts never figure in working memory. They never become conscious. And we only ever know of them by interpreting what does become conscious, such as visual imagery and the words we hear ourselves say in our heads.

Note how the professor has falsely assumed that non-sensory thoughts never become conscious to someone, never appear in working memory- that only their end result do (visual imagery or inner speech) but to someone familiar with unsymbolized thinking this is obviously wrong and we can experience and recognize these thoughts without any accompanying or trailing "sensory" experience (such as visual imagery/kinesthetic feeling or inner speech).

[Anonymous No.11894327]

>>11894324
To give an example, lets talk about intent or goal. A person familiar with unsymbolized thinking can become aware of the intent to have a drink of water, and go get up and get the glass and pour the water in the cup all without needing any sensory thought accompanying it, it was not a thought that was interpreted and brought to conscious awareness via mental symbols (imagery/speech/feeling) but rather the direct and conscious experience of the intent and its context but to this professor who has never experienced or become aware of unsymbolized thought processes for whatever reason, he insists the intent - pure unsymbolized/non-sensory intent - remained unaware and not in his working memory, only its after affect/interpretation- inner visual/speech was conscious to him. For an even more abstract scenario there are times when I am dreaming and as the dream begins I'm already aware of the "intent" of the dream or persons within the dream and how that kind of forms the dream scenario, sometimes this intent is clearer sometimes more distant but it is experienced as a kind of "knowing" as I can best describe it.

And the same applies to judgement and decisions, we can be aware of our judgements without needing them symbolized and interpreted for us in inner speech or visual imagery. But clearly not everyone is, however I don't believe that only some have access to this method of thinking/awareness and others do not. To get a glimpse as to how to experience unsymbolized thinking you only need to remember the last time you experienced the tip of the tongue phenomenon where you tried to find the right word to describe a concept or idea you had in your head but simply could not remember its associated word, the thought/concept was present in working memory but its associated symbols were temporarily unavailable, but the symbols themselves are not necessary to understand the concept or thought in your head...

[Anonymous No.11894334]

>>11894327
....which is how you can also experience other unsymbolized/non-sensory thoughts/attitudes/cognitions such as judgments, decisions, intentions, etc...

So we know that unsymbolized/nonsensory thinking exists and that not everyone experiences it and that people can be so unaware of its existence as to formulate entire theories of consciousness and come to whole conclusions (as the professor in the first article did) based entirely on only a partially complete picture of meta-cognition, and we also had the NPC meme and misinformation going around when the concept of unsymbolized thinking popularized in the Psychology Today article and studies https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/pristine-inner-experience exploded into public awareness (on the internet). With many denying it even existed.

So what ultimately is the factor that determines whether awareness of unsymbolized and nonsensory thought processes develops or not?

[Anonymous No.11894341]

>>11894334
>(as the professor in the first article did)

the second article*

[Anonymous No.11894357]

>>11894324
practical usecases? Quick rundown, I ain't reading that wall of psychologic woo

[Anonymous No.11894371]

Yes it's a huge problem, thing is that almost everyone in contemporary time and multiple others are mentally ill because of this and exist within a sort of self interpreted societal given framework of ordering, becoming a self-thought. It usually either turns the subject into an almost non-existent complacency, a total mind override by given framework of the society they live in, or self referential minor insanity.
I believe so much could be fixed, if people where just taught how to practice all types of thinking and split the mind and themselves between the nature surrounding them.

[Anonymous No.11894372]

>>11894357

[Anonymous No.11894481]

>>11894371
I don't know if my thought came properly across, doesn't really have the proper structure but I want to mean what is happening as not of a simplistic understanding of Dasein paradox "living with self while ultimately being with no one".
But rather people lose themselves, whether it is superstitions, a text of rules or the problem of existing with language, etc. They stop seeing themselves as what they are born as and rather implant themselves into the given framework of their self interpretation. People stop to think of I, others and the world and move into "I" as in a self referential point of who that person interprets themselves to be as a sub-class and how they are viewed in the given framework. This becomes a hyper phenomenon with social networking and everyone having cameras. It is what the Anti-Oedipus shows with language, the language used is a critique in itself of people existing and gives a comic and tragic feeling of people losing themselves into itself, that given or made up world.
This is why almost everyone, if not everyone here are mentally ill.
Do your best to escape it and see what you can truly see, you will begin to see glimpses of this world. The mind that is what it does.

[Anonymous No.11894524]

>>11894371
>>11894481
I don't think this is relevant to what I'm attempting to discuss which is a mode of meta-cognition

[Anonymous No.11894530]

>>11894524
a model* rather

[Anonymous No.11894551]

being hungry is not a thought, might be an instinct, the same way that your heart does not require conscious thought to operate

[Anonymous No.11894560]

>>11894524
I don't see how it wouldn't be. I'm trying to understand what happens when one doesn't take into account ones own and others processes.

[Anonymous No.11894566]

>>11894560
Ah I see, I mostly began with that example to segue into the discussion of Unsymbolized thinking itself

[Anonymous No.11894597]

HOW CAN YOU GUYS THINK IN IMAGES
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

[Anonymous No.11894616]

>>11894597
I don't think in images, I think of an object surrounded in space. If I think of a complex structure I think like eyes moving around and inside it, mapping it.

[Anonymous No.11894628]

>>11894616
same shit http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Galton/imagery.htm

[Anonymous No.11894642]

>>11894616
>>11894628
elitist bs

[Anonymous No.11894750]

>>11894334
>So what ultimately is the factor that determines whether awareness of unsymbolized and nonsensory thought processes develops or not?

I certainly know of pain and suffering as one factor. Essentially serving as being pushed below the ice, and you can only find your way out by finding another hole up to the air i.e. "nonidentification with suffering" which is certainly a high level attainment which makes many other internal methods trivial

[Anonymous No.11895049]

>>11894597
i just looked over at a little dust ball & my mind
had seen it as a little bird, and myself that large for a moment-
contained in my room, visually superimposed with the mosaic of life.
thoughts like these cause me to consider various things

[Anonymous No.11895393]

>>11894324
I can think verbally, non verbally and with pictures. But the best way imho is the internal monologue. If I am alone for prolonged amounts of time talking out loud also makes social contacts less needed for some reason.
This whole post kinda seems like some NPCs cope with being an NPC

[Anonymous No.11896564]

>>11894324
Great thread OP. Surprising (or not) that there's so little discussion.

Personally I've thought this type of thinking to be be "concepts". You know how you have the concept of a coffee mug even when you don't visualize it? Or the concept of a banana when you go grab one, even if you don't visualize it. So, it's abstract concepts rather than necessarily intents. A majority of a person's thinking is probably based on such concepts.

[Anonymous No.11896911]

Bump. I experience the tip of my tongue feeling all the fucking time.

[Anonymous No.11896958]

>>11894324
Yeah, these are all good points. The whole "NPC" meme is incredibly stupid in how it totally fails to understand unsymbolised thinking at all.
In fact I'd probably guess that most of the physicists and /mg/ are probably going to be spending large parts of their time with completely unsymbolised thinking. I know I do, since internal monologue is just a very poor way of thinking about certain concepts.
>>11896564
I think this is another good point, but I've heard people in real life unironically claim that it's not possible to think without having language first, as if thought is bound by language. I think this is pretty clearly false, but it's still shocking how many people actually believe this, or aren't able to realise that language itself is just a process of thought substituting a symbol for an object, so must clearly go far beyond only words.

[Anonymous No.11896991]

>>11896958
The "you need language to think" people seem to be obviously false but they do have a point too - language greatly changes the way we think. And I can't imagine solving some math or logical problems without walking through it verbally in my head. But yeah, clearly you can think and solve problems just fine without language, just look at crows and monkeys.

[Anonymous No.11896994]

>>11894324
me on the right
/sci/ on the left

[Anonymous No.11897040]

>>11896991
Yeah it certainly changes the way we think, or at least the way in which we perceive and express thought but to take the claim any further than that is my specific problem.

[Anonymous No.11897088]

>>11894324
It kinda makes me giggle because it reveals how actually virginal most of /sci/ is that they think they are special for thinking without having specific words/images associated.

Sex. Literally sex. If you are having good sex words don't go through your head and neither does images. It's purely instinctual. Same with the other basic needs like breathing and thirst

Thinking without symbols isn't special. It is useful, sometimes, but also makes it dick to explain thoughts later. Usually only low EQ people have purely symbolic thoughts. Either complete retards or autists who can barely communicate.

[Anonymous No.11897097]

>>11897088
It's a different kind of fun than masturbating. It's still fun.
Some maths textbooks I've read and am reading right now have nothing to do with what I'm assigned to read. I read them because it's fun.
It's quite sad that you've never actually experienced the joy of learning.

[Anonymous No.11897973]

>>11896564
Yeah like the "concept" of a white bear or pink elephant when told not to think about it, but if you are a primary conceptual/unsymbolized thinker you also do of course only in purely conceptual form - you just know and are aware you are thinking about that despite not visually seeing it or internally hearing yourself say "white bear" etc. That's why I brought up the "tip of the tongue" phenomenon to elucidate that thinking in pure concepts alone is not something foreign to most people they are just perhaps unaware of it, and as an example of unsymbolized thinking.

I brought up intent specifically to showcase that's what the professor believed that even intent never becomes conscious if its not tied to "sensory experience" which I assume is some inner visual or verbal "trigger", a feeling of thirst followed by a mental image of water, or a man I'm thirsty" verbal though. But you can experience just the interoceptive awareness of thirst and awareness of the subsequent intent to go do something about it without any "sensory" aspect to it beyond the interoceptive awareness. I did also specifically mention concepts in my post and also here in this earlier image I made during the NPC meme craze on here and other boards >>11894372

>A majority of a person's thinking is probably based on such concepts.
Here's my theory - maybe the initial unsymbolized thought is "masked" by immediate verbal or visual sensory thought that is more salient and those whose brains developed without the connections/structures that led to inner speech/mental imagery ability are more able to detect these "subtler" forms of thought, the conceptual thought, the "judgments, decisions, intentions and goals" the professor so adamantly insisted no one has conscious access to because they are not traditionally sensory experiences, but even these thoughts have a "feeling" of sorts to them, in that you can notice when you are thinking about them, or are accompanied by stronger emotions.

[Anonymous No.11897979]

>>11897973
Also It seems like both visual and language based thinking can be learned because I started out thinking purely conceptually and basically learned how to utilize inner speech in thinking later on (first coming in the form of daydreams explaining concepts to imagined people) until it developed to the point of being able to speak inside my head to myself - the whole "voice in your head" thing which was an utterly foreign concept to me for many years, I would read whole books without internally subvocalizing the words - a level of speed reading I couldn't achieve today desu. Likewise over a period of a decade I went from near total aphantasia (except when dreaming) to a decent level of visual mental imagery (through repetition/training) though can't keep it "stable" in my minds eye for long yet.

>>11896958
Regarding the NPC meme I think people seem to make the mistake of thinking that this "voice in your head" and the phenomenon of inner speech is the "self" and so in learning about people to whom this does not apply they immediately assume they lack a "self" and are NPC's (P-Zombies) deprived of inner awareness and self reflection, critical thinking capacity.... etc, of course it's all bullshit and stems from a poor understanding of the total range of cognition possible.

>since internal monologue is just a very poor way of thinking about certain concepts.
Indeed, its limiting especially if you don't like to talk much and prefer to be absorbed in the world of ideas and possibilities, inner speech/monologue is limiting because it feels like your thoughts are slower than the "instant" speed unsymbolized/conceptual thinking feels like, and mental imagery often fails to accurately convey highly abstract thoughts and ideas that are just concepts themselves arranged as if in an invisible web. And what I mean by "instant" speed is that an entire sentence or paragraphs worth of ideas can be condensed into a single mental "experience" of thought

[Anonymous No.11897980]

>>11894324
I'm not always "cerebrated", Isn't that a psychological transformation?

[Anonymous No.11897992]

>>11897980
I mean, I find weird always thinking by objects without any kind of ego...I have been like this sometimes, specially when solving issues under pressure.
But I find hard to believe somebody would be always thinking by objects.

[Anonymous No.11898002]

>>11896991
Language is how we first learn about concepts of course but they become internalized and if you are a primary unsymbolized thinker you can call up the concepts in your working memory and "headspace" - play with them, form complex ideas and thoughts, and form a solid web of interrelated concepts and ideas and their associated feeling and emotions perhaps - all without any language involved, the only language necessary is for when you have to explain them to others, which is why it helps to develop a very keen and broad dialect in order to most accurately and succinctly convey the ideas in your head into language that others can understand - but even then its a tall order as (at least for me) the right words to put down only come to mind as you are typing and speaking - the idea of knowing what you are going to say before you say it (not conceptually but in the actual sentence itself) is downright weird to me and when I attempt it myself and try to speak verbatim, it feels weird and unnatural, I would best describe the feeling as when you are talking on the phone and hear your own voice echo on the other side of the line, and how that tends to trip you up and feels very unnatural, same sort of feeling when I hold a full sentence in my head and try to speak it verbatim to someone else, less of an issue when typing however.

>I can't imagine solving some math or logical problems without walking through it verbally in my head
Interesting.......

[Anonymous No.11898007]

>>11898002
......
>>11896991
>I can't imagine solving some math or logical problems without walking through it verbally in my head
I suspect this could be a factor for my abysmal performance in math when I was in school - being neither able to visually see and keep solid any numbers or equations in my head and their operations in my minds eye, nor able to verbally "talk myself through" a math problem, relying solely on this internal unsymbolized/conceptual framework that is perhaps inadequate when it comes to application. Though this may not be the sole factor cause I remember reading about people who just look at a mathematical equation and instantly "know" the answer, without being able to explain quite how they got to it because their brains did all the work in the background. Maybe a different manifestation of unsymbolized thinking - not sure.

[Anonymous No.11898027]

>>11898002
>if you are a primary unsymbolized thinker you can call up the concepts in your working memory and "headspace" - play with them, form complex ideas and thoughts, and form a solid web of interrelated concepts and ideas and their associated feeling and emotions perhaps - all without any language involved
This is a good way to put it, probably what's happening too (how would you confirm it anyway?). Your brain is there, connecting and comparing concepts all the time in the background. When you see a tree, your brain gives you the idea that it's a tree you're seeing, by comparing the visual image with its conceptualization of what a tree is. The entire process is automatic, you don't need to subvocalize "well, those look like leaves so maybe it's a tree".

I have a hunch that somebody who primarily thinks unsymbolically would be more intuitive than average but possibly great at solving simple self-contained logical problems you encounter in nature all the time. But that's just spitballing.

[Anonymous No.11898035]

>>11897973
>Here's my theory - maybe the initial unsymbolized thought is "masked" by immediate verbal or visual sensory thought
That's almost certainly what's happening - look up "blindsight". Some blind people can subconsciously understand what they're seeing. Some area of the brain gets the signal and can very accurately tell what it's seeing, without the conscious parts having any idea what's going on. That's a tangential example, but we all have those subconscious and semi-conscious parts going on all the time even though we really don't think about it much usually.

[Anonymous No.11898062]

>>11898007
Well, after all inner speech also comes from the subconscious. It's likely a tool the brain is using - or better yet from your perspective, it's a tool that can help you work with concepts in a structured way I guess. I have a buddy who says he sees numbers as number lines, which sounds pretty amazing to me. Certainly helps in some kinds of tasks. Then you have those people who just "see" things - Rachel Riley on Countdown is a good example. That must come mostly from the semi-subconscious, where their brain is just damn great at processing and you get the answer without having to go through words or shapes. Exercise helps there a lot, training your brain to see patterns.

[Anonymous No.11898073]

>36 replies
>14 posters
really makes you think, desu.

[Anonymous No.11898084]

>>11898073
oh no, 2.5 posts per user! are you allergic to discussion?

[Anonymous No.11898095]

>>11894597
When you're doing math you sometimes feel like drawing a diagram or visualization, do you not? The structure you are trying to draw is coming from somewhere, you are already thinking in images, you simpy tap into that process.

[Anonymous No.11898120]

>>11897979
>first coming in the form of daydreams explaining concepts to imagined people
This, and writing an imaginary essay are the only types of internal speech I have ever felt the need for. Internal monologue sounds schizophrenic to me, or at best "fake", like something that people have coopted from books and movies.

[Anonymous No.11898122]

>>11897992
>thinking by objects without any kind of ego
>ego

Interesting. I guess you could consider unsymbolized/conceptual thinking to be the most egoless form of thinking couldn't you?

[Anonymous No.11898135]

>>11897979
>I would read whole books without internally subvocalizing the words - a level of speed reading I couldn't achieve today desu.
It's worth having and exercising both. My physical voice cannot do justice to poetry.

[Anonymous No.11898439]

Not even half as funny as the guy who invented integrals in a medical paper and got it published.

[Anonymous No.11898532]

>>11898007
I've never had much explicit thought, and maths always came easy to me. I thought it was dreadful to have to play computer, and go through the algorithm the teacher gives you, step after step after step, every question fundamentally the same for months before you encounter some new torture device you'll get to familiarize yourself with over the next few dozen sessions. So I made a habit of doing as much as I could in my head quite early, so I could race through it and spend the remaining 50 minutes staring at a wall. Literally, quite often, when I'd reached my quota for rambunctiousness.

Even with more complex problems, I find myself spending much more time mulling over it, trying to get a feel for a problem, than actually working on it. I have to plot a course first, before I start walking. And then, the work is just going through the motions; or I was wrong, and it's back to step 1.

I don't mean to contradict you, I'm not even sure if I'm a natural. Anything with graphs, or trig, I visualized heavily, and I often catch myself outright subvocalizing while reading literature. But, to me, mathematics is a largely unsymbolized process. Any time that doesn't work and I have to start by putting pen to paper(I'm looking at you, linear algebra), it has been miserable, and out of my grasp the minute I leave the exam hall.

[Anonymous No.11898539]

I'm also jumpy as fuck and if someone catches deep as fuck in thought I'll go into flight or fight mode instantly.

[Anonymous No.11898594]

tl;dr

[Anonymous No.11898666]

>>11894324
>“thinking a particular, definite thought without the awareness of that thought's being conveyed in words, images, or any other symbols”

This is just my opinion, but I feel like this is an oxymoron, because most of the time these unsymbolized thoughts do in fact have symbols that are created by and for the subconscious mind. So the conscious doesn't have access to the symbols but they do exist. Even if the symbol is a completely abstract thing, that abstraction becomes the symbol for that thought. The conscious mind not knowing what the symbol is means that in order to access that thought we need to go through the subconscious, which it does so willingly because it is you and has your best interests at heart. If you practice and try REALLY hard, the subconscious may even let you see those symbols, tho they may not make sense. In a way it's like and entirely foreign language. It may be the very 1st language that we ever learn. It gets VERY confusing when the subconscious decides to abstract or generalize an idea so 1 of these subconscious symbols can have multiple meanings, much the same way words can have multiple meanings, tho they're not different meanings. They're multiple meanings that are all the same. I know that doesn't make sense. Like I said it's hard for me to understand it sometimes. If I look REALLY deep inside myself I can see how these Unsymbolized thoughts are actually made of smaller parts. Letters if you will. Tho there's no universal alphabet that all thoughts are made from, rather these very small naturally occurring thoughts build on each other to form larger concepts

>>11894551
>being hungry is not a thought, might be an instinct
I'd argue that there's lots of thought that goes into that. All that thought however gets condensed and packed into a simple to understand message for your conscious mind. That simple condensed message is "I am hungry." The level of detail of thought to create that message goes much much deeper

[Anonymous No.11898682]

>>11894324
Wait, there are people who dictate to themselves when thinking about nonverbal things?

[Anonymous No.11899115]

>>11898666
In this case "symbols" refer to sensory aspects like inner speech, or visualization or kinesthetic sensation all of which can comprise a thought, but unsymbolized is simply awareness of a thought without any of those things accompanying it, or if they do they follow it after you've already consciously comprehended it it has nothing do to with "symbols" in terms of meaning but rather sensory experience of thoughts (pertaining to the 5 senses)

Come on you should know this shit satan

[Anonymous No.11899230]

>>11899115
>"symbols" refer to sensory aspects like inner speech
>unsymbolized is simply awareness of a thought without any of those things

I'm trying to say I believe that the subconcious has it's own inner speech in it's own proto-language. It's our first language we have before we learn to speak and maybe even before we form a consciousness. One that we've learned to forget and treat as background noise and then relearned to not ignore for when we chose to do things without thinking. It is the native language of our brains.

[Anonymous No.11899405]

>>11894324
Sounds like bullshit nerd shit. Who cares how we think, think about cancer or space or something more important.

[Anonymous No.11899420]

>>11899405
you just wasted your time and mine by typing this out, so fuck you

[Anonymous No.11899428]

>>11899405
understanding human thought, consciousness, and human creativity is the key to creating a true general AI
Understanding the architecture of thought is also crucial for creating a brain to computer interface.

[Anonymous No.11899433]

>>11899420
>>11899428
ZZZZZZ boring holy shit. Just stick a brain into a machine, who needs AI when we already are the I?

[Anonymous No.11899440]

>>11899433
>we already are the I
That is highly questionable

[Anonymous No.11899470]

>>11899433
i not arguing you like the anime faggot, im telling you to kill yourself

[Anonymous No.11899473]

>>11899440
Question it all you want. Flesh brain androids will defeat silica AI in the end.

[Anonymous No.11899484]

>>11897979
>inner speech/monologue is limiting because it feels like your thoughts are slower than the "instant" speed unsymbolized/conceptual thinking feels like, and mental imagery often fails to accurately convey highly abstract thoughts and ideas that are just concepts themselves arranged as if in an invisible web. And what I mean by "instant" speed is that an entire sentence or paragraphs worth of ideas can be condensed into a single mental "experience" of thought
Yes, that's exactly the feeling I have as well. Reading and imagining speech is about the only thing I think I prefer an inner monologue for, and for everything else unsymbolised thinking takes over and does a faster and higher quality job.
I pretty much agree with the entirety of this post, especially the complete misunderstanding of what people think a lack of inner monologue means for a person. In fact, in the study thinking is divided into several other categories as well, and those who lacked an inner monologue were often just using other forms of thought instead, but this seemed to completely escape people who thought that thinking primarily in words somehow made them superior.

[Anonymous No.11899520]

Is this why if I am reading silently, If I read while "pronouncing" the words in my head I read much slower than if I just look at the words on the page and keep moving to the next, without allowing myself to "manually" read them? Is this like my brain using cached memory? If my eyes fall on words I have seen before and understand or strings of words that I am familiar with, it's faster for my brain to auto-load what I already know about them rather than forcing myself to go through and think about each word manually. If I read a page and am focusing on each word and reading it "aloud" in my head, many times I will have to go back and re-read sections I just went through, but if I do the other strat of not pronouncing the words in my head I can fly through the page and not need to go back, it's like going too slow is detrimental.

[Anonymous No.11900294]

>>11899230
So you're basically arguing what the professor in the SciAm article was arguing for
>In this view, thoughts include only nonsensory mental attitudes, such as judgments, decisions, intentions and goals. These are amodal, abstract events, meaning that they are not sensory experiences and are not tied to sensory experiences. Such thoughts never figure in working memory. They never become conscious. And we only ever know of them by interpreting what does become conscious, such as visual imagery and the words we hear ourselves say in our heads.

He brought up basically the same idea, that these are thoughts we cannot access and only are aware of their sensory after-image (visuals/inner speech) but again I bring up unsymbolized/conceptual thinking to show that is not the case one can be directly aware of them, so you would have to come up with some other model to explain this hidden proto-language. If its something like the background processing of the brain I don't think it even needs its own "language" because it operation is never intended to be brought to conscious awareness, but one can be immediately aware of things like your own judgements and intentions as they appear in the moment, which the professor in the article insisted you cannot be because those thoughts don't have a sensory aspect according to him.

[Anonymous No.11900354]

>>11899484
>Reading and imagining speech is about the only thing I think I prefer an inner monologue for, and for everything else unsymbolised thinking takes over and does a faster and higher quality job.
Yep, it really sucks when your thinking isn't primarily or only unsymbolized anymore and so even when you do have an unsymbolized thought there's a tendency for subvocalization of the thought to follow immediately after - even if its unnecessary because you've already had and understood the thought miliseconds before, this inner verbal follow-up is so annoying. And furthermore it also comes with a feeling that the thought you just had won't "stick" or feel true unless you subvocalize it - which I know is false but its a strong feeling nevertheless, which leads me to imagine how someone who thinks primarily with inner speech and subvocalization all the time could not consider something to be "thinking" unless it is accompanied with an inner voice.

>>11899520
>Is this why if I am reading silently, If I read while "pronouncing" the words in my head I read much slower than if I just look at the words on the page and keep moving to the next, without allowing myself to "manually" read them?
Exactly, the latter is how I remember reading, and the former is typically how I read now with subvocalizing involved and the difference is night and day for sure.

>If I read a page and am focusing on each word and reading it "aloud" in my head, many times I will have to go back and re-read sections I just went through,
Yeah I fucking hate this it slows me down so much I need to break this habit, your post helped me remember how it used to be and gives me a good idea of what to do to try to bring back my speed reading ability thanks anon.

[Anonymous No.11900381]

This is why you need to read philosophy. Concepts are not the foundation of language; language precedes concepts. That is, we derive our concepts from language. So when people tell you that they think, and theorize through pure intuition and not language, they are full of shit.

[Anonymous No.11900519]

>>11900381
>Concepts are not the foundation of language; language precedes concepts.

Debatable, what is a word but a description of a concept? You can see how concepts become words in the lexicon of foreign words which have no equivalents in English
https://hifisamurai.github.io/lexicography/
https://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/lost-translation-30-words-with-english-equivalent.html

lets take one such example
>12. Yūgen
>(Japanese) Means “a profound, mysterious sense of the beauty of the universe … and the sad beauty of human suffering”. This concept is very important in Japanese culture and the exact translation often depends on the context.

According to you one cannot have this feeling without first learning the word that describes it, that is clearly illogical. There are perhaps many people across cultures who have had similar feelings but the Japanese decided to combine the two and put a word to them, the concept did not come into being when the language to describe it to others was finally formed. There is no similar analog in English to this word as well and yet we've all felt similar feelings but haven't decided to put them into words in a condensed form like that in a combination of multiple separate concepts into a single word. But we have for other concepts for example - "sublime".

Also the phenomenon of someone putting into words a concept or idea that one is familiar with but hasn't been able to put into language as someone else might have is something we are surely all familiar with as well, especially to someone who thinks primarily conceptually. I often had moments when I read what someone wrote that captured the essence of a concept/idea that was familiar to me in conceptual form but not in linguistic, that is a common occurrence to me and others.

Language alone is not required to come up with a concept, but for sharing it with others, which leads to an awareness of more concepts learned, internalized and available for reference.

[Anonymous No.11900525]

>>11900519
>Language alone is not required to come up with a concept, but for sharing it with others, which leads to an awareness of more concepts learned, internalized and available for reference.

To expand on that a bit, available for reference and for working with and integrating with other concepts and ideas all of which can be done in the mind without relying on the words for those concepts to be available in order to understand what you are thinking about. The words are only necessary to describe them, much in the same way I'm typing out all these posts drawing from all these learned concepts/ideas/memories/situations in my head that exist in unsymbolized form in my head until I type them out now and share them.

[Anonymous No.11900687]

>>11894324
npc cope

[Anonymous No.11900697]

>>11900687
only npcs need a voice in their head to tell them what to do

[Anonymous No.11900785]

>>11900294
>background processing of the brain
this

I'm just wildly spitballing here but I think maybe different parts of the brain use their own language or logic processing architecture. Visual, abstract, vocalization, mathematical, sensual, proto. These are all borrowed from parts of the brain that are highly specialized for 1 task. The subconscious learns all these different languages by observing different parts of the brain. Then it can understand and interact with all these different parts of your brain/body. Then it reprograms the prefrontal cortex, any time it needs to, and uses or thinks in the language or logic architecture which ever it thinks is the fast or most efficient, or most useful.

The conscious mind CAN learn these things, but it doesn't need to. The subconscious mind is there and can translate thoughts from one language or processing architecture to another. However translation takes time and mental energy. So it's quite advantageous to learn the original language that the thoughts come in. Some people are HEAVILY invested in 1 form of thinking and resistant to changing their thought architecture, like the professor, so he INSISTS thought must be translated first into a thought architecture or signed language that his mind can understand It's not that humans can't do it like the professor says, just that some people never learn. Which is what I think you were saying.

Another way to skip most of the lengthy translation process, and just give the subconscious a general task. The subconscious does the task, thinking in which ever form/language is fastest, without the conscious mind needing to get involved. It can be a completely 1 directional thought process with the conscious being 100% unaware of what's happening, however the subconscious can provide data back to the conscious mind in the form of small updates or maybe progress reports.This would be more like trance or a hypnotic state and happens all, mostly when you're not thinking about it

[Anonymous No.11900842]

>>11894324
>>11894327
>>11894334
send this to that professor, take out the ‘NPC meme’ part, and report back with his reply.

[Anonymous No.11900944]

>>11899428
>creating true general AI
cuck
thought thread could have potential to ve interesting but it serves the ‘AI retardation’

[Anonymous No.11901598]

>>11899428
That's exactly right.
It's not often you see people with a similar mindset.
I wonder if the lack thereof is the reason behind the slow progress of general artificial intelligence.

[Anonymous No.11901649]

huh, I'm trying to do basic addition without vocalizing it but I just can't shut up

[Anonymous No.11901671]

>>11901649
If you can visualize, try that.

Imagine a stack of a stack of 5 pennies and a stack of 4 pennies. Pile them into 1 stack and how many?
If you're a good visualizer you may wanna learn the abacus. Once you learn it, you can visualize an abacus and do math that way. It's quite common and is the reason why some countries still teach with this tool, but it relies entirely on visualization processing so it's not for everyone.

[Anonymous No.11901713]

>>11901671
Yeah, I manage to do it without my internal voice if I play Kyary in my head. I fill it with noise and visual numbers pop up.

I guess I can do it but I vocalize 24/7, practically every moment of my life so It's not like it's easy to lose

[Anonymous No.11901859]

Just a disclaimer, I'm not a doctor or even a student. Just some self taught rando anon with a keen interest in this topic that likes to play armchair scientist from time to time. So keep that in mind and take my posts with a grain of salt.

>>11901713
>play Kyary in my head. I fill it with noise and visual numbers pop up

Fascinating. This implies there may be a hierarchy to all the modes of thought. If there is I would imagine it'd be dynamic and varies from person to person and even from time to time in the same person. All the modes of thought are physically available to the conscious mind, but there is a deeper subconscious thought process in deciding which one to use, when to use it, and what for.

I think it's likely you'll always be best at the internal voice mode of thought, but with practice surely you can get better with the other ones. Actually becoming away of an entirely new way is the 1st step. It's like learning to control a muscle you've never used before. (try learning the Vulcan salute if you wanna know what I mean)
Also. >visual numbers pop up
You mean to say visual representation of numerical digits? In that case you're using both reading and visualization at the same time. This means the arrhythmic data your brain is processing needs to be translated twice before reaching your conscious. First into "reading/number" data then into visualization data. I don't think this is very efficient and I can only guess at how exhausting that would be. I don't want to say don't practice this, but just keep there may be an easier way.

[Anonymous No.11902444]

>>11901671
shit what you say is slow, im a very very advanced visualizer and i tried both the addition with the method you say and another method where you just imagine numbers like you would wrote it out. Still slow as fuck as you need some seconds to do moderate to big numbers.
how do geniuses who do it fast and with extremely big numbers do it? what is their thought process? Or even normal people who do it fast?

[NUCLEAR TAKE No.11902597]

>>11894371
>self referential minor insanity
I like that you put it this way. It's no secret that the world seems to be going through a sort of epidemic of depression, alienation, anxiety and such. My personal guess is that contemporary ways of sociation imprint a separation between Self and Not-Self way, waaaaay too strongly. To put it in different words, contemporary society is making people way too self-aware, to the point where they're constantly beset by overthinking, pointless worrying, irrational fears of social failure etc. And doesn't that ring a bell with the disorders I mentioned? One important factor here is that, as far as I can see verbal thinking encourages this self-awareness, this stark division between Self and Not-Self. It doesn't cause anxiety and depression itself, obviously, but it seems obvious to me that being "stuck" in verbal thinking 24/7 would inevitably lead to unceasing rumination, which is precisely the root of those disorders. A person becomes too balled up in the Self to the point they unconsciously develop this solipsistic dettachment, as if the Self is something completely apart from the society, life, the univese and everything -- or in simpler terms, that person is permanently beset by the feeling on not belonging, no matter what they do, where they are nor with whom. Like a ghost doomed to always witness and never participate, excluded from everything for unfathomable reasons, certain that, just as they don't belong anywhere, no one can possibly understand them. And the irony here is that there are ever more people feeling like these ghosts, yet their wretched condition prevents them from bonding even over that very condition! Is it any wonder we're all anxious sadsacks today? We're all perfectly discrete bundles of Self, incapable of reaching out and of living in the now, and being stuck in verbal thinking might be at the core of this problem.

[Anonymous No.11902806]

>>11900381
>Concepts are not the foundation of language; language precedes concepts
Nonsense. The idea that a symbol can represent not just one specific object but all ideal objects despite that thing not existing in real life (for example, the word tree referring to an ideal tree, which does not exist in real life, but is just a class to which all tree-like things belong) is the foundation of language, and this cannot be summoned out of nothing. Someone gets the idea in the mind of how to do it. The thought of an ideal tree, or the idea that one finger held up can represent the number 1, which also does not really exist except as an idea, needs to come into thought first, and only then be expressed in language.
Language essentially comes directly from unsymbolised thinking in that sense.

[Anonymous No.11903623]

>>11902806
>Language essentially comes directly from unsymbolised thinking in that sense.
Precisely and so one can learn to think or be born thinking primarily in unsymbolized form and have all the advantages and disadvantages that brings you. I will say for someone more introverted it is not a disadvantage at all really

[Anonymous No.11904939]

>>11894324
Quality thread, anon.

I can definitely sense the difference between non symbolic thought and the opposite. It seems to be the exact difference between the left brain hemisphere and the right brain hemisphere, just like Iian McGilchrist describes in his book “The master and his emissary”. Julian Jaynes and The Origins of Consciousness gives insight into that division, too. The implicit meaning of language is the business of the right brain hemisphere, while the left brain cares about the words themselves, the symbolic representation of meaning but not meaning itself.

Whatever. Interospection and mind space is step one, the awareness within that mindspace which uses whatever faculties it has is step two, which ultimately is consciousness, and where you gain the ability to “use” yourself, and say what you actually think and believe in, and not what you think others want to hear from you. Creating an intent is the task of the right brain hemisphere, executing the task manages the left brain.

The mind space is an analog to outer space. The “I” or “eye” within that space comes from the narratization function, and that only comes from language and ideas. I don’t know how to go much further than that because it is just astonishing to be that we even are.

[Anonymous No.11904950]

>>11894481
Ego is just a construct which adapts to society, and is based on the polarity of shame and pride. Shame is an instrument to control members of a given society. Shame makes you self conscious in order for you to correct your behavior.

So yes, most people are not in control of themselves.

[Anonymous No.11904957]

>>11894750
The suffering you talk about is the left brain inhibiting the right brain. It is habituated shame. People with left brain damage are ecstatic while people with right brain damage are rather depressed. Dissolving ones ego is the equivalent of decreasing the activity in the left brain.

[Anonymous No.11904961]

>>11896564
ideas. Platos theory of ideas.
>>11896958
It is not a coincidence that Max Planck and Albert Einstein were professional musicians, the one playing piano and the other playing violin. Stimulates the right brain. Einstein himself said how most of his thought isn’t auditory, but more of a “feeling”, which means he was a right brainer.

[Anonymous No.11904978]

>>11897979
People have all the faculties, but they need to learn to use them. I’m writing all these sentences without having first checked them in my mind even though I know what I’m going to write. There is a difference between intent and action.

[Anonymous No.11904990]

>>11898007
I don’t know why but the less conscious I was in any language (german, English) or even math the better I was. when I’m trying too hard I start failing.

[Anonymous No.11904995]

>>11899405
This should have been the first post
>>11894324
You're right, a big part of the mind is not in the verbal zone some think the mind is.
But you're using too much words and neuroscientists know this. Is not surprising.

[Anonymous No.11904998]

>>11904978
>I’m writing all these sentences without having first checked them in my mind even though I know what I’m going to write.
Yes that's how I wrote out all my posts and write in general as well, are you saying everyone does this or do others have to spell out to themselves and internally subvocalize everything they will write down? As in they have to have the words in conscious working memory to put down rather than simply feeling what they want to write down and it coming out in words as its being typed or spoken... I'm not sure myself.

[Anonymous No.11905004]

>>11898532
Interesting to hear. The way you do math is they way I live my life. I decide (in a very detailed way and in correct order) what I want to do, and the rest happens by itself as soon as I intend it. Making a plan and adding the “feeling” of intent, or desire, consciously, is what makes me a functioning human being.

[Anonymous No.11905007]

>>11904995
>You're right, a big part of the mind is not in the verbal zone some think the mind is.
I'd say it goes far beyond that, while the prevailing notion in western society seems to be that such is the case, I've already given many examples of that fact in addition to the example of the professor who based a theory of consciousness of his, around the fact that he was certain we do NOT have the capacity be aware and conscious of such nonsensory thinking.

[Anonymous No.11905018]

>>11899520
It is the exact difference between left brain and right brain. Left brain is very focused and detailed, and with the right brain you get the idea, intent, the big picture

[Anonymous No.11905038]

>>11904998
There are certainly people who have to think through their sentences explicitly, but that doesnt mean their not able to think like we do

[Anonymous No.11905063]

>>11905004
>in a very detailed way and in correct order) what I want to do, and the rest happens by itself as soon as I intend it. Making a plan and adding the “feeling” of intent, or desire, consciously

YES that's precisely it! It's like this feeling of intent that you are aware of and carry it out as required, I gave the water example to illustrate the way that intent transforms into useful action, another example I can give happened today in which I was trying to meditate and in the moment decided that I will do so for 5 minute intervals before a bell rings to track time, and the entire thought, including its intent was just summed up in that one instant "feeling" and nothing further had to be done, I didn't need to subvocalize to myself or visualize anything, in that instance you just "know" what to do or what your intentions are.

I've also noticed this implicit knowing of intention when I'm daydreaming or dreaming and I'll "know" without knowing how I know, for example a characters intentions in a dream or the overall intention of the dream itself, so that feeling of intent extends out beyond just actions and into general info or intentions of others (in a dream/daydream)

But yeah in general it is a kind of "feeling" its wrong to call it nonsensory but a very subtle feeling, not even an emotion because that comes after the thought is first consciously experienced and can be pleasant or unpleasant or neutral, depending on the thought/its context.

>>11905038
Yes and the reverse apparently too because while writing that out certain choice words or phrases did come to mind verbally, even sub-vocalized, even under my breath so that does happen both ways it seems. I suppose the degree of how often it happens one way or the other can vary, and perhaps be trained towards one direction or the other, a balance is possible too. So much variation.

>>11904995
>he doesn't find the topic of metacognition super fucking interesting and relevant to almost underrated degrees

[Anonymous No.11905083]

>>11905063
>to almost underrated degrees
to an almost underrated degree*

[Anonymous No.11905091]

>>11905007
>prevailing notion in western society
Talking like a smartass will not make you so. You're just saying average person doesn't understand consciousness, woah. Shut the fuck up
>>11905063
>>he doesn't find the topic of metacognition super fucking interesting and relevant to almost underrated degrees
Yes. It is stupid to discuss with imagination and "basedence talk" a topic so complex that even neuroscientists plus psychologist, philosophers and psychiatrists cannot fully grasp (unless there is collaborative work or a mind that can get into all of these). I think this thread on a mongolian cartoon website will not make it justice and you are all larpers.
Kindly kill yourselves

[Anonymous No.11905134]

>>11894642
The vast majority of humans are capable of thinking in images and there is nothing elite about it.

[Anonymous No.11905141]

>>11905091
>̓̒Iͬ̓̾̐͛t͆̓ͪ̽ ̉ͩͤͤi̿̑͗̉ͣͯ̀s͐̽̾ ͑̔̏̚s͗t̋̄́u͑̾̌͋̓̎̒p͗ͣĩͣ͗̏́͗ͦdͯ̃ ͨͭ̿́̓͒ͦt̊ͬͬo ̇̍ͤd̄ͪĭ̏͋ͭ̀̐̊s̃ͯ̍ͪͤ̉c̀͑̃ͯ̽u̎ͯͭsś͐̊
>t̛͞o̵̕p̡i̷̢c ̵ş͞o ̶c͘omp̷l̢e̵̵x͢ ͘͝t͝ha̕t̢͠ ́ev͡en̸̡ ̶́n̷eu̸r̴̨o̸s̨ći͠e̷n̕t͘i̶͞s̴̷͝ts̸̢ p̵ĺ̡us ̀ṕ̛syc̢h͘͝o̵͘l̨͠ǫ̴g̡͠i̴̵s̨͞t̨,̸ ̡͡p̵͘͞h̸i̴̷l͟͡óso͟ph̸̨͡e͠rs̢ an̴̨̛d ͠p͘s̷͘yc͠hi͘͡͠à̴t̢͢͟r̵̀ìs̕͢͡t̢͝s͝ ̶̸c͠a̡͢n̡ņ͝ót̷̕ ̴̨͞f̶̴u̶l̡l̴y ͟g̷r̸̵a̢͡sp
>̖̭̹̖̤̼͓̫K̥͙͎͖̝̱͉i̟̣͖͖̝̹̙̠̖̩̻͍͙̤̖̦̬̮͖n̪͖̙̝̠͍͉̞̟̫͓̖̹̟͚̱̹d̳̞͉̰̞̩͓̯̰͇̞̰̘͕̘͎͚̝̹l̞̱͔̖͓̯͔̪̥̳̹̗y̖̺̮̰͖͎̫̻͎̻͕͇ ̪̯̮̠k͉̙̖͖͙̪̯̳̺̹ḭ͚̼͔̹̜̰͕̼l̫̹͇̩̦l̰͙̗̠̹͚̬̦͎͙̟͇̩͓̰͖ͅ ͇̜̩̘̟̩͇̖͙̞̗y̱͇̮̩̗̰̭̹̺̰̰o̝̣͇͍̤̫ṵ̙͎̥̖̻͇͚̙͎̣̙̞r̦̟̫̮̭͓̱̜̬̯̟ͅs̳̠͉̞̳͔̳̞̝̼̖̖e̯̟̩̭̖̞̙̦̺̝͖̻͎̪̺̭l͙̬͓͇͖̥̩͔̳͖̩̘ͅv̩̜̰̝̳̖e̹̱̩̥̙̳̻̖s̮̫͇̥̟̳̞ͅ

H̶̥͙̼̤̘̣̘̪̣̞͈̝̦͉͈͙̔̈́̀̔͛͋̚͡͞E̢̛̗̙͈͉̟̰̜̼̯͕̮͛͋̒̈ͦ͊̏͛̎ͣ̿̉ͫͦ̈́́̀ ̡͉͍͎̝̪̫̾̾͌́ͩ̋̐͒͐͒̐͋͒͜͡C̩̩͈̘̜̠̻̗̤ͣ͊͂̕ͅO̶̫̞̘̟̟͓̻̖̮̹͚͉̠͇͐̀̊̑ͩ̕͜͢ͅM̷̡̞͕͎͈̫̱̏̊̑ͭ͐͜͞E̸̸̦̪͖͇̭̙ͨͩ̑ͮͬ̀ͪ͗ͯ̈̑̐̃̕S̶̸̩͖͔͓̭͍͔̼̩̗ͩ̈͐ͧͩ̍
Calm your tits there satan.

[Anonymous No.11905146]

>>11905091
>̓̒Iͬ̓̾̐͛t͆̓ͪ̽ ̉ͩͤͤi̿̑͗̉ͣͯ̀s͐̽̾ ͑̔̏̚s͗t̋̄́u͑̾̌͋̓̎̒p͗ͣĩͣ͗̏́͗ͦdͯ̃ ͨͭ̿́̓͒ͦt̊ͬͬo ̇̍ͤd̄ͪĭ̏͋ͭ̀̐̊s̃ͯ̍ͪͤ̉c̀͑̃ͯ̽u̎ͯͭsś͐̊
>t̛͞o̵̕p̡i̷̢c ̵ş͞o ̶c͘omp̷l̢e̵̵x͢ ͘͝t͝ha̕t̢͠ ́ev͡en̸̡ ̶́n̷eu̸r̴̨o̸s̨ći͠e̷n̕t͘i̶͞s̴̷͝ts̸̢ p̵ĺ̡us ̀ṕ̛syc̢h͘͝o̵͘l̨͠ǫ̴g̡͠i̴̵s̨͞t̨,̸ ̡͡p̵͘͞h̸i̴̷l͟͡óso͟ph̸̨͡e͠rs̢ an̴̨̛d ͠p͘s̷͘yc͠hi͘͡͠à̴t̢͢͟r̵̀ìs̕͢͡t̢͝s͝ ̶̸c͠a̡͢n̡ņ͝ót̷̕ ̴̨͞f̶̴u̶l̡l̴y ͟g̷r̸̵a̢͡sp
>̖̭̹̖̤̼͓̫K̥͙͎͖̝̱͉i̟̣͖͖̝̹̙̠̖̩̻͍͙̤̖̦̬̮͖n̪͖̙̝̠͍͉̞̟̫͓̖̹̟͚̱̹d̳̞͉̰̞̩͓̯̰͇̞̰̘͕̘͎͚̝̹l̞̱͔̖͓̯͔̪̥̳̹̗y̖̺̮̰͖͎̫̻͎̻͕͇ ̪̯̮̠k͉̙̖͖͙̪̯̳̺̹ḭ͚̼͔̹̜̰͕̼l̫̹͇̩̦l̰͙̗̠̹͚̬̦͎͙̟͇̩͓̰͖ͅ ͇̜̩̘̟̩͇̖͙̞̗y̱͇̮̩̗̰̭̹̺̰̰o̝̣͇͍̤̫ṵ̙͎̥̖̻͇͚̙͎̣̙̞r̦̟̫̮̭͓̱̜̬̯̟ͅs̳̠͉̞̳͔̳̞̝̼̖̖e̯̟̩̭̖̞̙̦̺̝͖̻͎̪̺̭l͙̬͓͇͖̥̩͔̳͖̩̘ͅv̩̜̰̝̳̖e̹̱̩̥̙̳̻̖s̮̫͇̥̟̳̞ͅ

>H̶̥͙̼̤̘̣̘̪̣̞͈̝̦͉͈͙̔̈́̀̔͛͋̚͡͞E̢̛̗̙͈͉̟̰̜̼̯͕̮͛͋̒̈ͦ͊̏͛̎ͣ̿̉ͫͦ̈́́̀ ̡͉͍͎̝̪̫̾̾͌́ͩ̋̐͒͐͒̐͋͒͜͡C̩̩͈̘̜̠̻̗̤ͣ͊͂̕ͅO̶̫̞̘̟̟͓̻̖̮̹͚͉̠͇͐̀̊̑ͩ̕͜͢ͅM̷̡̞͕͎͈̫̱̏̊̑ͭ͐͜͞E̸̸̦̪͖͇̭̙ͨͩ̑ͮͬ̀ͪ͗ͯ̈̑̐̃̕S̶̸̩͖͔͓̭͍͔̼̩̗ͩ̈͐ͧͩ̍
.

Calm your tits there satan.

[Anonymous No.11905163]

>>11905091
>implying you can't discuss meta-cognition (especially its anecdotal aspects) without being a psychologist, philosopher or psychiatrist. It's precisely this kind of elitist mindset that was the reason why the phenomenon of aphantasia was so unknown for so long by the general public, and the phenomenon of unsymbolized thinking as well until it reached critical awareness on the internet.

We just tend to assume everyone thinks like we do even though we have the theory of mind to know it is not always true, the more we peer into metacognition from any angle (mongalian fingerpainting discussion forum is one angle), the more insight we might find, the more misinformation we tackle (muh P-zombies NPC meme, etc..)

Where's your sense of curiosity anon? In any case, since making this thread I've gotten many new insights and new perspectives from anons on metacognition from the anecdotal perspective and from my own mind piecing shit together, so it was worth it

[Anonymous No.11905170]

>>11905091
>implying you can't discuss meta-cognition (especially its anecdotal aspects) without being a psychologist, philosopher or psychiatrist.

It's precisely this kind of elitist mindset that was the reason why the phenomenon of aphantasia was so unknown for so long by the general public, and the phenomenon of unsymbolized thinking as well until it reached critical awareness on the internet. We just tend to assume everyone thinks like we do even though we have the theory of mind to know it is not always true, the more we peer into metacognition from any angle (mongalian fingerpainting discussion forum is one angle), the more insight we might find, the more misinformation we tackle (muh P-zombies NPC meme, etc..)

Come on, where's your sense of curiosity anon? In any case, since making this thread I've gotten many new insights and new perspectives from anons on metacognition from the anecdotal perspective and from my own mind piecing shit together, so it was worth it

[Anonymous No.11905185]

>>11905170
And I will add we knew scientifically about aphantasia since the 1800's

http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Galton/imagery.htm

You can see accounts here from men interviewed who describe total aphantasia. Galton himself coined the term. However the general public was still largely ignorant of this condition until it reached some critical mass of awareness on the internet in the past few years only. And suddenly a great majority of people were introduced to the fact that not everyone thinks and even experiences the same things in their mind that they do, and that awareness helps to spread larger awareness of metacognition in general, this knowledge can only benefit us, provided more people know about it, which it took a hell of a long time for that to happen in this case.

[Anonymous No.11905206]

>>11905185
Reminds me of the 100th monkey effect high level insider was talking about

[Anonymous No.11905219]

>>11905206
>The hundredth monkey effect is a hypothetical phenomenon in which a new behaviour or idea is said to spread rapidly by unexplained means from one group to all related groups once a critical number of members of one group exhibit the new behaviour or acknowledge the new idea.

Ah yes exactly what I was trying to say but lacked the precise enough words to say it, and someone went and coined up a phrase that sums it up even better.

This can definitely happen artificially as well, if it wasn't for the NPC memers misinterpreting the results of the Psychology Today study on unsymbolized thinking and viewing it as justification for the existence of true "P-zombies" and so bombarding /pol/, /r9k/ and /sci/ with those threads for weeks on end then it might not have reached critical mass nearly as much.

Pretty much in both cases we can attribute the hundred monkey effect to the wide reach of the internet, with aphantasia it was a twitter thread that gained traction, and later on reddit, finally on 4chan, with unsymbolized thinking it was the reverse gaining traction on 4chan, then reddit, finally twitter.

[Anonymous No.11905249]

>>11894324
It appears to me that what you're describing is essentially instinctive thought

[Anonymous No.11905265]

>>11905249
its like instinctive thought but bootstrapped to abstract reasoning. At times this feels a lot more “real” and at the very least for efficient than visual and symbolic reasoning. It does also sort of induce depersonalization, an animal kind of consciousness, at least for me.

[Anonymous No.11905354]

>>11894324
>>11894327
>experienced as a kind of "knowing"
I feel this sometimes
It's like my subconsciousness helps my inner monologue progress by skipping a part that I already "understood" without even having to think about it

[Anonymous No.11905391]

>>11905265
>its like instinctive thought but bootstrapped to abstract reasoning.
Yeah that's a good description, in that there can be both instinctive thought, as well as unsymbolized abstract contemplation, in which you form entire conclusions and decisions or ponder on concepts and ideas and wordy musings purely abstractly.

>It does also sort of induce depersonalization, an animal kind of consciousness
I wouldn't say that, that's only if you identify your self/personhood/ego with an inner voice and perceive if you lack that you somehow lack agency or are dysfunctional in some way for thinking differently than is more common.

I've had fleeting and rare instances during meditation where all thought ceases and there is only awareness of the present moment, never has it felt like depersonalization though, as there is always a sense of "self", and in any case I don't believe in the Buddhist idea of no-self anyways.

[Anonymous No.11905394]

>>11905391
worldly*

[Anonymous No.11905438]

>>11905354
>by skipping a part that I already "understood" without even having to think about it
Yeah exactly, but interestingly enough, try to force yourself to think verbally with an internal voice long enough if it wasn't natural for you and you may find that subvocalization of the thought you just had will start to follow almost instantly, to your annoyance, and further a still more curious phenomenon will occur in which you begin to believe that unless you subvocalize your thoughts and hear them in that inner voice then they won't be remembered, or processed or absorbed and will be forgotten, or not given the same weight and importance in your brain. Which is quite ridiculous when you think about it, you're the one experiencing the thought, its not somehow less of a thought or of less importance whether its subvocalized or entirely unsymbolized but that's what I and at least one other anon have experienced, its crazy interesting.

Makes you wonder why this occurs and whether this has something to do with the almost unspoken notion the majority of people have that all thinking is verbal, frankly this whole mess makes me regret trying to develop that kind of thinking. As before the only time I actually subvocalized words in my head were either when recalling song lyrics or movie quotes, or in daydreams of conversations with others about random shit or something I learned and then explained to others.

However having prior experienced the extremes of unsymbolized thinking, and having read of the extremes of subvocalization (constantly running inner monologue for every action and thought they have) and of visual thinking (that lady who only thinks in vivid pictures) and having gone from aphantasia to somewhat vivid mental imagery I can conjure up at any time with focus, it becomes clear to me that you really can train different modes of cognition but the changes take very, very long to occur to any noticeable degree.

[Anonymous No.11905469]

>>11905438
>think verbally with an internal voice long enough if it wasn't natural for you and you may find that subvocalization of the thought you just had will start to follow almost instantly, to your annoyance
>begin to believe that unless you subvocalize your thoughts and hear them in that inner voice then they won't be remembered, or processed or absorbed and will be forgotten, or not given the same weight and importance in your brain

Maybe the human language is an infectious disease?
https://youtu.be/q3OTEdZkBaQ?t=60
I know how crazy it is to say it, but sometimes I think the movie MIB might have been a documentary of sorts made to prepare the public mind for the possible existence of aliens. Maybe there's more little Easter eggs in this movie, or maybe the person who wrote the script subconsciously had the same thoughts about language and cognition and decided to work it in the movie somehow.

What if we invented a different language? Maybe one that's more efficient for the brain to work with, or maybe so inefficient, slow, and cumbersome that the brain refuses to work with it, and only chose to when communicating with others, leaving internal thoughts pristine and untouched by human language. Kinda reminds me how when they designed QWERTY keyboards they needed to make them difficult to type on, intentionally, to slow down typists who typed too fast and jammed their mechanical typewriters. Maybe we need to slow down human language somehow so the brain refuses to think in that mode and so it won't "jam up" cognition. Both strategies have merits.

[Anonymous No.11905491]

>>11905469
I don't know, probably depends on the person and their individual personality and circumstances. I can see someone who is a writer, or actor or director or likes to daydream conversations extensively having more personal value and use of their inner voice and subvocalizing for instance. Whereas someone more interested in ideas, and abstract and highly conceptual thinking would find more value and therefore use their unsymbolized thinking patterns more.....

Patterns, they really are just patterns we fall into or can deliberately follow perhaps.

So its not something inferior, depends entirely on the person. I'm sure a primarily visual thinker will find much value in their method of cognition if they are an artist for instance. And of course as I mentioned in earlier posts language is how we are exposed to concepts in the first place, so we still need it to be exposed to the idea.

The concept and operation of orbital mechanics is something I only learned through language even if that knowledge is now able to be used by my brain entirely in unsymbolzied form for instance when I'm thinking of what maneuvers to execute in KSP, to disregard language entirely like that is unwise desu

[Anonymous No.11905495]

>>11905491
>And of course as I mentioned in earlier posts language is how we are exposed to concepts in the first place

To clarify I mean exposed to concepts, shared and communicated by others that we might not be aware of - for example the concept of aphantasia.

[Anonymous No.11905860]

You shold be able to do both, thinking only with words is what women do (see verbal IQ) thinking only with images and instinct is what most nonwhites do (with the exception of semites and middle easterners). if you have amazing performance IQ but low verbal IQ you're basically Chinese, you'll get a great job, but theres a glass ceiling unfortunately

[Anonymous No.11905873]

>>11894324
I think it's because those without it don't actually realize it's a thing. Moreover, they can't imagine what it would be like.

I think that's why my therapist has such a hard time getting me.

[Anonymous No.11906985]

bump

[Anonymous No.11906996]

>>11905860
See what you and other /pol/fags get wrong when metacognition is discussed there is that you assume not thinking verbally is the same as not having access to a pattern of thought. You can have high verbal IQ (my verbal skills in highschool/middleschool were top of the class) while not having the habit of thinking in verbal form, via subvocalization.

[Anonymous No.11908735]

So does anyone else also imagine movement? Like its hard to explain but you use your kinesthetic imagination combined with spatial imagination and just imagine movement, of people, things, while daydreaming, not even seeing it but "sensing" it.

It's similar to unsymbolized thinking but different as well

[Anonymous No.11909328]

>>11897979
I think there’s more to say about the way we communicate more frequently in terms of text rather than speech. I feel that most people will be affected by this rampant change from primarily speaking to text communication. It may even change the way we visualize concepts in our minds. Makes me wonder if hieroglyphics could have introduced our minds to a form of thinking that is not very well known today.

[Anonymous No.11910465]

bump

[Anonymous No.11910842]

>>11908735
cant everyone do that?

[Anonymous No.11911258]

I still hold firm to the belief that the brain is extremely decentralized

I believe it operates as many different clusters that all communicate with each other in an intuitive thought language that's wordless and more about abstract ideas and emotion. All these separate parts of the brain just shout out what they're thinking, and each of those clusters of the brain need to filter out what they need to listen for. Like listening to 1 conversation in a noisy room. Maybe each part of the brain speaks in it's own dialect and if some cluster of the brain is required to hear another cluster it may comprehend just that 1 dialect, while other parts of the brain my comprehend many or even all the dialects. I think by learning human speech we begin thinking in the thought pattern of verbalization, because our minds are desperately trying to connect with other human beings the same way the clusters try to connect with each other. I think on an unconscious level we all have a deep desire to form 1 giant collective consciousness and connect with each other, much the same way separate clusters in the brain desperately try to connect to each other. It's sad to see that this desire to connect with other humans, leads to people thinking more and more in the the form of words.This desire may be so great that they overspecialize in it, and forget how their own intuitive thoughts work, and they start to tune out or ignore non-verbal thoughts.Much like clusters in the brain that are specialized and need to only listen for 1 dialect, our minds try to specialize communicating with other humans and learn to only think in words.When this happens we cut ourselves off from our own most inner deep thoughts.We no longer hear our own intuitive thought.Ironically when this happens, it becomes almost impossible to connect with other humans in a deep way as we desperately need to.This leads to even more specialized thinking in words.A vicious cycle and maybe a new form of insanity for our society

[Anonymous No.11911264]

I still hold firm to the belief that the brain is extremely decentralized

I believe it operates as many different clusters that all communicate with each other in an intuitive thought language that's wordless and more about abstract ideas and emotion. All these separate parts of the brain just shout out what they're thinking, and each of those clusters of the brain need to filter out what they need to listen for. Like listening to 1 conversation in a noisy room. Maybe each part of the brain speaks in it's own dialect and if some cluster of the brain is required to hear another cluster it may comprehend just that 1 dialect, while other parts of the brain my comprehend many or even all the dialects. I think by learning human speech we begin thinking in the thought pattern of verbalization, because our minds are desperately trying to connect with other human beings the same way the clusters try to connect with each other. I think on an unconscious level we all have a deep desire to form 1 giant collective consciousness and connect with each other, much the same way separate clusters in the brain desperately try to connect to each other. It's sad to see that this desire to connect with other humans, leads to people thinking more and more in the the form of words.This desire may be so great that they overspecialize in it, and forget how their own intuitive thoughts work, and they start to tune out or ignore non-verbal thoughts.Much like clusters in the brain that are specialized and need to only listen for 1 dialect, our minds try to specialize communicating with other humans and learn to only think in words.When this happens we cut ourselves off from our own most inner deep thoughts.We no longer hear our own intuitive thought.Ironically when this happens, it becomes almost impossible to connect with other humans in a deep way as we desperately need to.This leads to even more specialized thinking in words.A vicious cycle and maybe a new form of insanity for our society

[Anonymous No.11913107]

>>11911264
>Much like clusters in the brain that are specialized and need to only listen for 1 dialect, our minds try to specialize communicating with other humans and learn to only think in words.When this happens we cut ourselves off from our own most inner deep thoughts.We no longer hear our own intuitive though

Holy shit good points, I think that's what led me to hold on to unsymbolized thinking for so long is that I'm a mega introvert who doesn't feel the need to talk much IRL and prefer to be with my own thoughts so I guess that keeps an awareness of your intuitive/abstract thoughts more strongly than someone who switches fully over to verbal focus, and developing their inner voice (or several as others do).

[Anonymous No.11913113]

>>11913107
I see now, its all about trade-offs, but then what about conditions like autism, where any verbal communication becomes challenging, that it something totally different from this intuitive/unsymbolized thought I've described, but yet probably familiar? Maybe autism results when no verbal component is able to develop? IDK much about this though

[Anonymous No.11913137]

Would an example of non symbolic thinking be when you read philosophy or something and you UNDERSTAND the concept in some strange vague way but then have to then translate that understanding into language in your head?

[Anonymous No.11913156]

>>11913137
I think so yeah.

>explain your work
>explain how you got your answer
>post a step by step explanation how you arrived at your answer
>MFW

[Anonymous No.11913268]

>>11913156
So wouldn't you agree a larger portion of UT happens unconsciously compared to verbal or visual thinking? Not to say you don't have access to it consciously and don't "supervise" it consciously, but a lot of it certainly isn't accessible to the consciousness, whereas internal speech and visuals are, since otherwise you'd not be aware of them.

[Anonymous No.11913314]

>>11913268
No because up till highschool my thinking was exclusively unsymbolized, there wasn't any verbal or visual thinking beyond ear-worms and movie quotes/movie lyrics, as well as occasional daydreams. But the whole talking to yourself inside your head using your inner voice aspect was completely alien to me to the point I thought it was just a convention of convenience used in shows and books to explain what the person is thinking as I never needed to think in such a way to explain my own thoughts and feelings to myself, it was that curiosity which led me to realize some people do actually think like that

I think you're making the same mistake the professor in the article did in assuming conscious thought can only be sensory in some form, it's perfectly possible that it goes like this:

subconscious brain processing (unaware) -> conscious experience of unsymbolized thought/feeling (aware)

I say this because after sometime trying to experience it myself I found the following phenomenon occurring quite often-

subconscious brain processing (unaware) -> conscious experience of unsymbolized thought/feeling (aware) > conscious experience of verbal thought explaining/spelling out the unsymbolized thought/feeling/cognition to myself (aware)

The latter becomes a habit of sorts but is totally unnecessary because once you consciously experience the thought in unsymbolized form you comprehend it entirely in its full depth and meaning, what the Psychology Today author called it "appearing at the footlights of consciousness". I've even felt the rapid speed of thinking and making new connections and insights decline since learning how to initiate self-verbal cognition, because of that annoying "verbal feedback".

[Anonymous No.11913334]

>>11913314
Well, you're also wrong with your second assumption. For me inner speech _is_ the thinking, it happens right as I'm processing the thought, it's a part of it. So, my brain is making use of it as a tool for thinking, not adding it in afterwards for the heck of it.

I recognize I do have those unsymbolic thoughts too, and simpler, more instinctive things like getting up from the bed are like that, I recognize them in my consciousness, but I don't think them as pictures or images. This probably also happens when inner speech is involved, but it's "drowned" by the more prominent verbal thinking. My point, however, was that most of the unsymbolized thinking I do is focused on simpler stuff, and often I'm only half aware of it, so to me it's less conscious than any other mode of thinking. Are you saying it's different for you?

[Anonymous No.11913389]

>>11894324
>mistaking symbol for sign
WHEN WILL YOU LEARN!!!!!!!!

[Anonymous No.11913422]

>>11913334
>My point, however, was that most of the unsymbolized thinking I do is focused on simpler stuff, and often I'm only half aware of it, so to me it's less conscious than any other mode of thinking. Are you saying it's different for you?

Yeah it was and to a degree still remains the most conscious mode of thinking and I prefer it that way because I prefer to stay in the abstract, the more nebulous my thoughts/feelings/impressions the better, as it feels easier to form connections that way, its like a "thought soup" of sorts. And it can be focused and highly specific as well, and it feels like trying to pin the thoughts down to language only restricts the flow of thinking and forming of connections, basically my preferred and most natural mode of thinking is in the abstract and conceptual - ideas and so on. While its also in use for the simpler mundane everyday stuff as well, all the examples of intent and action that I gave ITT (going for a cup of water).

I've had my best insights and epiphanies and my worst thoughts and realizations all come in that unsymbolized form, rather than through inner speech analyzing and "talking it through" in my head. It kinda feels like a compressed zip file of a text document rather than the individual words of the document, which is why it can be so hard to translate (especially the most abstract and vague notions and ideas) into language which necessitates developing a keen vocabulary. But I am still struck occasionally with moments where I'm thanking someone for "finally putting to words" some notions and ideas which I wasn't able to myself or never bothered to.

And there is also the inner silence I much enjoy, periods where there is just awareness of my surroundings, of what I'm doing and no verbal "inner narration" because I find that annoying, moments like that are quite peaceful, or give me greater focus, such as when playing vidya.

[Anonymous No.11913438]

>>11913422
And since I'm only really interested in developing a keener vocabulary and verbal IQ for the purposes of explaining or learning new concepts/ideas there is less focus on "small talk" developments, my manner of speech is mostly formal unless shitposting, talk very little to others outside of family, and unless its about some idea or topic I'm greatly interested in and come up with absolutely terrible dialogue, I wouldn't be able to write a play or poem or convincing script that others would enjoy for my life, but that is a trade-off I'm perfectly fine with because I suspect the mental resources or neural connections that would go into that might "crowd out" the more subtle, abstract cognitive mode and awareness I described and I wouldn't want that.

Though I will say that writing it all out like this does seem to help a little with understanding or coming upon new insights. I suspect this is why I often had these daydream moments I fell into when idle (like in shower or on the subway) explaining some complex topic to someone through a (very formal dialogue) and subsequently feeling a sort of greater understanding myself of the topic involved. Or when working my brain now on this thread it seemed to help form some new connections and develop new insights as well as I'm typing this down and trying to recall all my understanding of this topic - all unsymbolized insights of course, but then in this case converted to language right away.

So it seems some degree of verbal thinking like this (or writing) can be beneficial as well.

[Anonymous No.11913447]

>>11894324
I don't quite get it. My thoughts rarely involve words and concepts. Am I a symbol thinker?

[Anonymous No.11913452]

>>11913447
Do they involve images then?

[Anonymous No.11913857]

>>11913422
That's interesting. You're able to work through long-winded problems etc like that, not just short operations? I don't see why not, but language to me offers a "fixed point" for working through the mental (unsymbolized) models.

I'd expect animals to use that and some degree of visual thinking most, since they don't know language. It means they could theoretically be able to work through human-level problems too without having language, at least if they were smart enough.

[Anonymous No.11913877]

>>11894324
Don't chess players or other gamers think like this. Correct me if Im wrong but they think in pure abstract in the sense that they dont visually or verbally know what moves to make, they just KNOW.

The abstract thought in particular is understanding the rule set that surrounds the game of chess.

You just know that a horsie can move in an L shape without having to visually it. You just know where its going to land.

[Anonymous No.11913897]

>>11913422
>>11913438
>>11913857

Im using unsymbolic thinking when reading your messages trying to determine whether it makes logical sense.

As im reading your messages and I get the feeling that It sounds true the feeling is like a instantaneous spark. Is this an example of unsymbolised thinking?

[Anonymous No.11913924]

>>11913897
That rather sounds like unconscious processing, so not "thinking" per se if you don't experience doing anything and your brain just does it behind the scenes. Probably the unconscious form of unsymbolised thinking? I may be wrong though, the processing could just be called intuition, and the feeling is the unsymbolised thinking.

[Anonymous No.11913935]

>>11913924
So what practical applications does this UT have. I cant imagine a scenario where UT would be used in place of visual or verbal.

[Anonymous No.11913938]

>>11894324
You sound like a schizo desu

[Anonymous No.11913989]

>>11913877
>but they think in pure abstract in the sense that they dont visually or verbally know what moves to make, they just KNOW.

Yeah that's how it is when I play any vidya, but I don't know if this is UT or just getting in the zone/flow state, maybe there are similarities between the two though

[Anonymous No.11914051]

>>11913314
Verbalized explicit thoughts are output from the idea underlying all the words, images and what not.

[Anonymous No.11914061]

>>11913422
Vague notions are ideas which are not fully formed yet. If you can’t put it into words that means the idea has still to mature and be “pondered” upon

[Anonymous No.11914069]

>>11913438
All just right brain activity which tries to process “positive” anomaly. Classical music from Bach, Mozart and Beethoven played by a proper director like Fürtwängler stimulates the right brain too. Not a coincidence that Einstein was a professional violin player

[Anonymous No.11914092]

>>11913857
I feel like there is a back and forth between ideas and their symbolic representation, the one refining the other. First you have a vague idea, then a clearly defined idea once you write it out. Once you’re aware of the idea explicitly new vague ideas start growing on that “fixed point”, which redefines or refines the point you made before.

This is important to me because I believe that truth works, so it is important to dig deeper and deeper until your own explicit thought represents the truth as it is, where nothing new comes in which could refine it. But this is a very high ideal and most probably unreachable, if it works it’s true enough and it is good if you can grow and refine it further. That’s how I get “insights” which I can’t google or find in books, which are most valuable to me as they often have direct (positive) effects on my life.

[Anonymous No.11914234]

>>11914069
I thought the left vs. right brain dichotomy was debunked?

[Anonymous No.11915779]

http://journalpsyche.org/files/0xaacf.pdf
The book Thinking Without Words may be of interest

[Anonymous No.11915802]

>>11913422
I agree. While we have a tendency to often think in words since that's how we've learned to think in order to be able to communicate with others, it is my belief that many people, and for myself beyond any shadow of a doubt, that people can think without words. Words are simply transport vessels to carry an idea/emotion from one person to another. The fact that there are different languages demonstrates this well, as well as when someone (like me for example) says, "I'm trying to figure out how to put my thought into words."

[Anonymous No.11915957]

>>11894324
I have a couple of theories related to this.
1. Parents and primary school teachers train children to subvocalize. Instead they could teach children to read by typing words into google on images search. Speaking and listening is learned separately. In other words, speaking isn't taught along with reading as being somehow necessary for reading.
2. Normal sized foveae inhibit reading speed, and the brain subvocalizes out of boredom. People like OP have larger foveae than normal.

[Anonymous No.11916493]

>>11915957
nice cope

[Anonymous No.11917155]

>>11915957
there should be more focus on art
specifically communicating with art

there are some foreign language teachers who teach by speaking ONLY in their foreign language, which forces students to learn. I'd like to see art be taught this way. All instruction is done without words. It'd require a special kind of teacher to be able to communicate deeper meaning without words tho, and those type of people are rarer and rarer in our society

[Anonymous No.11917237]

>>11915779
Interesting, this seems to be more about the question of non-linguistic thought in animals, infants and aphasics and less about non-linguistic thought in adult humans as a specific cognitive mode - one that is nevertheless dependent on language for the learning of new concepts and ideas.

>It has often been debated whether there can be imageless thinking at all. Moreover, it has been suggested that mental qualities serve as providers of access in the mind. In Bernard Baars’s description, “all abstract concepts are accessed consciously by means of perceptual and imaginal events” and “abstract concepts have qualitative mental symbols”. The associated mental imagery can be of all kinds of sensory qualities: of visual pictorial form, or of auditory form of a sound. In the case of linguistic thinking, the associated imagery is in the form of inner speech.

>Bermúdez concedes that there is metarepresentational thinking that has sensations and mental images as objects, but he does not consider sensations and mental images as instances of genuine thinking. He thinks that “we are not [...] ever conscious of propositional thoughts that do not have linguistic vehicles”

And just like Carruthers in the first article I linked, these men also believe that we cannot be conscious of non-linguistic/sensory thoughts, that there must be a "vehicle" for such thoughts to first come into working conscious memory.

The reviewer seems to get the picture better than Bermudez-

>Perhaps the vehicles of non-linguistic metacognition are non-linguistic conceptual thoughts

however

>(by which I mean mental representations in this context) that are connected to mental images. It is well known that abstract thoughts are often accompanied by specific exemplar-like mental images.

[Anonymous No.11917242]

>>11917237
Again he too focuses on mental imagery, so even conceptual non-linguistic thoughts must be sensory based in his view. But just ask any aphantasic unsymbolized thinker to think of a pink elephant and they will tell you they are aware they are thinking of that concept despite not verbally thinking "pink elephant" nor seeing the mental image of one they just "know" they are thinking about it but could not describe it to you in any sense beyond that.

Galton himself identified such aphantasics in his study >>11905185

>VIVIDNESS OF MENTAL IMAGERY.
>Cases where the faculty is at the lowest.
>97. No individual objects, only a general idea of a very uncertain kind.
>100. My powers are zero. To my consciousness there is almost no association of memory with objective visual impressions. I recollect the breakfast table, but do not see it.

But what mental representation for non-linguistic conceptual thoughts can there be if not in the form of a visual mental image?

One possibility could be grid/place cells-
https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-brain-maps-out-ideas-and-memories-like-spaces-20190114/
http://nautil.us/blog/new-evidence-for-the-geometry-of-thought

I've often noticed some sort of underlying "spatial" sense component to unsymbolized thinking, but I never really put much thought into it, that is until I learned about place and grid cells recently and now things are starting to connect. The hypothesis goes that far from just representing physical space, grid cells may also represent conceptual space, this concept though unverified strikes me intuitively as true as it often feels like one is "navigating" through concepts in a literal sense! And much like you just "know" where to go because your brain has built up an internal representational map of your physical (or virtual) environment via place and grid cells, it feels like you just "know" what you are thinking of because concepts, ideas and general knowledge might be mapped via grid cells as well.

[Anonymous No.11917246]

>>11917242
So perhaps rather than using inner speech or images to REPRESENT concepts, an unsymbolized thinker may be more aware somehow of their direct relevant firings in grid cells in inner "conceptual space" and not rely on mental images or linguistic thought to represent or access them.

This would then explain the phenomenon of super rapid unsymbolized thinking many including me report where it feels like you just jump from concept to concept, one idea to another without any subvocalization or mental imagery processing to slow down the thought-stream - maybe that is the literal awareness of the firings of grid cells representing different concepts/information encoded within them, which explains why a single felt and experienced thought can be composed of different concepts and general information all meshed together into a coherent (or non-coherent and vaguer, associative, indirect) fashion, yet still perfectly understood by you without any pictorial or linguistic representation required. Taking the most abstract concept such as time for instance - you don't need to see a visual image of a clock or hear yourself in your head say "time" to know when you are thinking of the concept of time, and this makes it easier to think even more abstract into the concept of spacetime (perhaps the two most abstract concepts brought together) because again you don't need a mental representation of the concept of space to know you are thinking about the concept of space (in its entirety), and so in that way you navigate these conceptual spaces, recalling concepts and bring them to working memory to play around with them, "conceptual space" representing the physical, biological grid and place cells and connections that have encoded these concepts and committed them to memory. This could all explain why unsymbolized thinking is so well suited to abstract thought, as you're already used to thinking in the abstract in general.

[Anonymous No.11917319]

>>11917246
>To remember long speeches, ancient Greek and Roman orators imagined wandering through “memory palaces” full of reminders. Modern memory contest champions still use that technique to “place” long lists of numbers, names and other pieces of information.
The first article brings up memory palaces, but its a mnemonic technique that never worked for me, because it relies on a vivid and stable mental imagery capability, which I lack. However the fact that the technique works at all and links conceptual/memory reference to internal mental spatial navigation as directed by grid/place cells further suggests that maybe this hypothesis is on to something, not to mention the fact that grid/place cells reside in the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex - memory regions of the brain.

Also I just realized perhaps this concept might partially explain the tip of the tongue phenomenon wherein general concepts associated with a word are recalled and in working memory but the specific word associated with that concept is unable to be recalled temporarily. So the conceptual grid cells are firing but there is an error upstream in recalling the specific word associated with the concept

This really feels like it could be the missing link in the model of unsymbolized thinking and what underlies it. But there's no way to be certain right now. And to clarify I'm not saying the grid/place cell activation thing is limited to unsymbolized thinkers either because the same grid/place cells activate in everyone, but that they simply have more awareness of it somehow and it alone can function as a primary method of thinking, a lot of anecdotal accounts corroborate this but nothing actually studied and verified in a lab I think. Still I firmly believe there is some link between grid cell function and unsymbolized thinking.

[Anonymous No.11918349]

>>11917155
Uhh you need words to communicate concepts to others most efficently though, which isn't that what teaching is all about?

[Anonymous No.11918406]

>>11916493
Look at the brainlet:
>Conflates UT with intelligence.
>Wrongly assumes that I don't experience UT by misinterpreting my thoughts on what prevents or causes it.
>Somehow deduces that my theorizing is a form of coping.
My thinking is often unsymbolized. Usually when coding or doing math.
When reading I usually subvocalize, but not always. It seems to depend on how fast I can read the text.
>>11900697
Brainlet groupie.

[Anonymous No.11919442]

>>11894327
>To get a glimpse as to how to experience unsymbolized thinking you only need to remember the last time you experienced the tip of the tongue phenomenon where you tried to find the right word to describe a concept or idea you had in your head but simply could not remember its associated word
Isn't this inferior intelligence, though? To be good at critical thinking, you need to know how to articulate your thoughts clearly.

>>11894616
>I think of an object surrounded in space
Duh? This kind of thinking is a basic requirement, at least for STEM fields.

>>11896564
I think the "concept" of thinking about a coffee mug is so second-nature to you that you don't need to use your working memory to visualize it anymore. It's because of you thinking about it for a gazillion times, nothing special. Contrast that to, say, when you go grab a new book that you've started reading. You surely visualize it when you think about it for the first few encounters.

>>11898007
>people who just look at a mathematical equation and instantly "know" the answer, without being able to explain quite how they got to it because their brains did all the work in the background. Maybe a different manifestation of unsymbolized thinking - not sure.
Actually, they may have done similar kinds of problems many times to achieve that state, akin to how a stock trader might "know" if the price is going up or down even if his own analysis says otherwise.

>>11898122
>Interesting. I guess you could consider unsymbolized/conceptual thinking to be the most egoless form of thinking couldn't you?
Bullshit. Can you conceptually think other person's hunger or thirst?

>>11898666
>most of the time these unsymbolized thoughts do in fact have symbols that are created by and for the subconscious mind. So the conscious doesn't have access to the symbols but they do exist.
This is the most accurate post so far.

[Anonymous No.11919518]

>>11919442
>Actually, they may have done similar kinds of problems many times to achieve that state, akin to how a stock trader might "know" if the price is going up or down even if his own analysis says otherwise.
This is certainly a thing. If you can't explain how you derived the result, it wasn't conscious thinking. This kinda unconscious thinking works nicely for problems your brain is very familiar with, kind of like a trained machine learning model.

[Anonymous No.11919570]

>>11898682
>Wait, there are people who dictate to themselves when thinking about nonverbal things?
There are none. If they can dictate to themselves the nonverbal things, they have to think those things first. Language is a way to express your thoughts, not the other way around. If you cannot think about or experience a word, then you don't know that word.

>>11900354
Idk what kool aid you are drinking, but speed reading is a meme beyond a certain extent. You have to fall back onto using your inner voice when reading anything with a tint of complexity.

>>11901649
The easiest way to do basic arithmetic calculations is to memorize all the possible combinations that add up to "10" (there are not that many combinations). Then it's much easier and much faster from there.

>>11904998
Pretty much everyone writes/speaks like this if they are not going to be doing a business presentation.

>>11905063
>YES that's precisely it! It's like this feeling of intent that you are aware of and carry it out as required, I gave the water example to illustrate the way that intent transforms into useful action, another example I can give happened today in which I was trying to meditate and in the moment decided that I will do so for 5 minute intervals before a bell rings to track time, and the entire thought, including its intent was just summed up in that one instant "feeling" and nothing further had to be done, I didn't need to subvocalize to myself or visualize anything, in that instance you just "know" what to do or what your intentions are.
This just means you are good at concentrating at the task at hand. Anyone can do it with a bit of meditation practice. Happens with me too when I meditate. The feeling is exhilarating in a sense because you are sure that you have nothing else to do except the one thing you have to do.

>>11908735
That skill is what makes someone qualify as human. It's a primitive human cognition.

[Anonymous No.11919595]

>>11918349
>words to communicate concepts to others most efficently though

but a picture is worth 1000 words. Surely an art teacher could turn their instruction into a picture.

[Anonymous No.11919616]

>>11919595
How would you write your own sentence in pictures? Could you demonstrate?

[Anonymous No.11919694]

>>11919616
I'm not an artist. I'm not going to "demonstrate" for you, but this is 4chan. it's an IMAGE board

memes are literally what you'd call a sentence (complete idea) put into picture format.
About decade ago, this place as pumping out 90% of the memes on the internet. Mostly because it was a hangout for the introverts on the internet who spent a lot of time in their own heads, and can't verbalize their thoughts very well, neither internally or externally. So they'd express their ideas picture/meme format. We all got good at photoshop.

I'm not saying art class needs to turn into 4chan or anything. I'm saying that pictures can express thought, and that's the true purpose of art. To express what can't be spoken in words. Some ideas are so fleeting that if you try to put them into words they vanish. Even simple instructions can be expressed as simple stick figure pictograms.

[Anonymous No.11919701]

>>11919518
Same process behind creative insight right? You're not conscious of the background connections made just the "final" product/thought born out of that background processing?

[Anonymous No.11919732]

>>11919694
>I'm saying that pictures can express thought, and that's the true purpose of art. To express what can't be spoken in words. Some ideas are so fleeting that if you try to put them into words they vanish.
Well said, there are certainly feeling/moods/ideas which almost lose something by trying to convert them to language but are more preserved in a sense if just converted to art even if it doesn't get the full point across it does better than trying to do it through words when our vocabulary may be too limited.

For example one can describe in great detail the experience of the "sublime" but the more you try the less you grasp it, it has to be felt and personally experienced to be truly grasped and understood as to what an awesome emotion it is and what it feels like, and then you find words fail to capture the experience and only pictures/video or art can do some justice, perhaps even trigger it, but mere descriptive and analytical words never will.

[Anonymous No.11919747]

>>11919701
Well, all thinking kind of works like that. But did any processing go through your consciousness (did you feel anything) or did the solution just pop up in your mind instantly? I think that is the difference between conscious and unconscious problem solving. You kind of get the unconscious type "for free", but sometimes it's the result of rigorous earlier training, such as walking or playing tennis. Dunno about creativity - some people seem to be naturally more creative than others, but they don't just instantly come up with constant ideas, they have to work for it consciously too.

[Anonymous No.11919762]

>>11919747
>but they don't just instantly come up with constant ideas, they have to work for it consciously too.
It's a little bit of both, the right stimulus can instantly generate several new ideas and those ideas further generating more ideas, inspiration is everywhere.

Epic scales tend to work best for this, there's more for the brain to work with, more space, more possibilities, more ideas

[Anonymous No.11919774]

I like to talk while I do stuff. It's easier to focus on doing physical tasks like tightrope walking when talking to myself even if it's just gibberish.

It helps me be more creative too. I like reading a lot. When I really get into reading I can't even see the words anymore and it's just a fully immersive experience.

Thinking without any abstraction gets boring quickly and lacks grounding in useful frameworks.

[Anonymous No.11919785]

>>11899428
>understanding
well what I gathered from OP it's exactly the understanding part that doesn't help
suck it liberals and scientists

[Anonymous No.11919838]

>trying to switch the NPC meme around

Lmao NPCs be copin

[Anonymous No.11920685]

>>11917242
>>11917246
>>11917319
OP here, thoughts? Did any of you even know about grid and place cells? It doesn't seem like common knowledge, wasn't for me.

However it makes sense and this is the model of unsymbolized thinking I've settled on, although apart from being really far reaching there is also the possibility that grid/place cell firings all happen unconsciously and the fMRI can detect their activation but they are not the direct source of conscious unsymbolized thinking and there is one more factor involved before you are consciously aware you are thinking of some concept in unsymbolized form, so-

grid cell activates -> (?????) -> conscious awareness of the concept (unsymbolized thought)

However given that the articles I linked talk about your memory of concepts/other information stored in these grid cells in the entorhinal cortex I fail to see what additional brain regions would need to be activated for you to become aware you are thinking of a concept unsymbolically/non-linguistically and given that grid cells activate in every brain no matter ones primary thinking method then perhaps it's the activation profile that differs.

So here's a quick WIP model I've come up with-

1 =grid cells activate -> converted to language -> inner speech
2 =grid cells activate -> converted to mental image -> mental imagery
3 =grid cells activate -> no conversion -> unsymbolized thought

This is a flexible model that accounts for different primary thinking styles or conditions:
>Aphantasia
(1 and 3) or just (1) or (3)

>Aphasia
(2 and 3) or just (2) or (3)

>Exclusively visual/spatial thinking
(2)

>Exclusively verbal thinking
(1)

>Exclusively unsymbolized thinking
(3)

>Visual/spatial and verbal thinking
(1,2)

So while grid cells activate for everyone, not everyone notices and "stops" the thought there, before conversion to symbolic representation, I think UT is when the former happens, which explains why you can experience all three in order (3, 2, 1) as I have.

[Anonymous No.11920748]

>>11894372
I guess I have all of them then?
I regularly have sub vocalization when considering discussions, like right now, and I recognize that it lags quite significantly behind the predetermined thought path, though there might be a bit of rephrasing here and there, or expanding as I go along.
I also regularly imagine images or 3d spaces when I try to see assemblies of things, or intuitively understand how exactly something operates.

Now I understand that there are some brain dead people out there but surely this isn't that uncommon?

[Anonymous No.11921454]

>>11920685
Hmm I wonder if UT and this grid cells model have any connection or significance to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_of_thought_hypothesis

and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideasthesia

But these are just shots in the dark now.

[Anonymous No.11921824]

>>11898439
Link?

[Anonymous No.11923637]

>browsing wikipedia reading about philosophy
>suddenly thought occurs about how much philosophical texts have been lost to history and how our current framework of knowledge and understanding builds upon those that survived but there could be many breakthroughs and new ideas we could have equally expanded upon to modern days just as well that are utterly unknown to us due to lost knowledge
>have this whole entire thought in the form of an instant feeling or understanding, not a verbal thought, not a mental image
>realize this whole realization stays as a unsymbolized thought in the mind for me until it is explained in a concrete way like I did now
>realize that giving this whole thought a specific description/symbol is how we come to define and share unsymbolized concepts and realizations we have
>however there is no single word out there in the English language describing this specific concept/realization and its associated emotional state
>can only attempt to link it to already known and defined concepts (nostalgia, longing, loss, incomplete knowledge)
>will still be able to refer back to this specific concept in later times by simply "activating" it in my mind without requiring a preceding symbol

[Anonymous No.11923656]

>>11897088
>If you are having good sex words don't go through your head and neither does image
you are surprisingly correct, tho I do like to think about evolution when I cum

[Anonymous No.11923680]

>>11919732
>>I'm saying that pictures can express thought, and that's the true purpose of art. To express what can't be spoken in words. Some ideas are so fleeting that if you try to put them into words they vanish.

I know there is a stereotype of some people who "just don't get art." Do you think this stereotype is reflective of people who are only capable of thinking with internal monologue?
This would actually make a lot of sense.

They've trained their brain to think ONLY in words. So when ideas are presented in art form they can't comprehend it. Or maybe the experience they get from art is only "feelings" that they can't decompress into fully realized thoughts, ideas, and logic so it never makes sense to them. I feel like there is an epidemic of this type of shallow thinking or lack awareness of internal/deep thought today's society.

[Anonymous No.11923690]

Something I think is missing from this thread is the fact that zen bhuddist thought is literally on developing a frame of mind that is completely unsymbolic in the context of mindfulness and experience. But they do it intentionally and with specific goals.

[Anonymous No.11923697]

>>11923656
>sex
>cum
>refractory period initiated
>1 second later
>"How did man evolve from primate to homo sapiens? What are the missing links yet remaining to explain man's evolution? How is it that only man evolved sapience and consciousness, what level of consciousness (if any) did Neanderthals and Cro Magnon and other extinct close relatives of homo sapiens have, if any?"

All unsymbolized of course.

[Anonymous No.11923706]

>>11894324
Literally made this discovery years ago. Unless you’re an idiot you should be able to think much faster than you can mentally say the words. You already know what words you’re going to think, you’re just waiting for the incredibly slow process of mental vocalization to catch up. Anyone who’s ever done speed reading knows exactly what I’m talking about. It’s clearly a superior way of thinking but these fucking /sci/ weirdos just called me an NPC and mentally talked to themselves about how they got my ass.

[Anonymous No.11923711]

>>11923697
nah, its more like passing my genes on type of thinking, just before cumming

[Anonymous No.11923731]

>>11923690
I did very briefly touch on Buddhism ITT, about how in deep meditation you may find yourself completely void of all thinking, while still experiencing everything and knowing you are experiencing, and even evaluating, showing that verbal thought alone is not tied to self-awareness and metacognition

But I think meditation in general is a way to get in touch with unsymbolized thinking, it stresses noticing the activity of the mind, so overtime you may notice subtler and subtler activity (such as that underlying unsymbolized thinking) perhaps, especially since meditation has been shown to reduce activity in the DMN which is where mind wandering stems from, and much mind wandering is in the form of verbal or mental imagery since that is the type to most readily capture our attention and distract us when we identify so much with our thoughts.

[Anonymous No.11923734]

>>11923637
Hmm, this is definitely interesting. I suppose our concepts aren't concrete, but we still have the internal rough idea (mental model) of what they mean. When given a scenario, we can use this internal vague idea to judge if it matches the concept or not. Thus giving the concept a definition in words also requires us to refine our idea of the concept.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/concepts/

[Anonymous No.11923740]

>>11902597
>as if the Self is something completely apart from the society, life, the univese and everything

[Anonymous No.11923750]

>>11923731
I'm talking more like active meditation practice. Mindfulness particularly, not just internal but external. The state of being present and in the enviorment you are in. Making decisions and actions with everything quiet inside.

It's a nice thing to flip on when I'm feeling tired of life.

[Anonymous No.11923755]

>>11923731
Uh, for me meditation *does* remove the knowledge that I'm experiencing. Since there's no thoughts. There's just neutral observation, and if I notice myself coming back I focus more on my breathing and stop existing again. If I do it right there's pretty much nothing else than my breathing. So I wouldn't say there's any UT going on at all.

[Anonymous No.11923768]

>>11923706
>You already know what words you’re going to think
I'd say unless you intend to speak them out loud or write them down you don't even have to know the words you just activate the concepts you know you are thinking about and form thoughts that way, thoughts that only you can understand.

>you’re just waiting for the incredibly slow process of mental vocalization to catch up
I think mental vocalization as well as visual representation are just habits that we develop unconsciously but for some they may not develop for whatever reason leading to unsymbolized thinking. And mental vocalization of unsymbolized thoughts is likewise a habit you can adopt as I have.

I was able to speedread exactly as you described until I practiced and picked up the habit of mental vocalization now its almost habitual to subvocalize when reading which definitely slows me down but that process even carries over to thinking now as well, and its no longer pure unsymbolized thinking, because of that habit now mental vocalization follows it immediately, also slowing me down, it no longer feels like I can think at the speed of thought anymore as often as I used to because of that habit of mental vocalization I picked up, now I'm waiting for my mental sentences explaining my own unsymbolzied thoughts to finish - and this happens automatically and its almost exhausting to notice and stop it mid-stream, really need to change this habit now.

[Anonymous No.11923884]

>>119237
>Making decisions and actions with everything quiet inside.
Yeah that's an example of unsymbolized thinking I gave in the thread

>>11905063
>today in which I was trying to meditate and in the moment decided that I will do so for 5 minute intervals before a bell rings to track time, and the entire thought, including its intent was just summed up in that one instant "feeling" and nothing further had to be done,

Everything was "quiet inside" apart from the sole intent in the moment, to decide on how long I will set a timer for. It's like you don't have to tell yourself "okay I'm going to do X now" or see a mental picture of you doing X you just "do" X while being aware simultaneously of your intent to do so.

It's different from impulse though which is doing action without awareness of it until you perform it. I think many people confuse this idea with impulsive/automatic behavior and this leads to the NPC/P-zombie misconception.

[Anonymous No.11923891]

>>11923884
>>11923731

[Anonymous No.11923904]

>>11923755
>Since there's no thoughts. There's just neutral observation
>and if I notice myself coming back I focus more on my breathing and stop existing again

Your thoughts may cease to exist replaced with pure awareness and focused attention but your self doesn't, the self is not tied to your own thoughts is what I'm saying. Which is self evident with UT.

[Anonymous No.11924004]

>>11923904
We may have a different definition of "self" then, since I consider it to be "me-awareness", ego. If I don't feel myself or possession of the things I'm experiencing, I don't really consider myself to be present. And during meditation I really do stop thinking about me. However, I still feel a degree of possession over my conscious UT, but with deep meditation that stops.

The moment I "snap out" of meditation is funny btw, for a moment there's no thoughts or feeling about "me" while my brain is reorienting itself.

[Anonymous No.11924047]

>>11924004
>We may have a different definition of "self" then
Maybe, or maybe I'm understanding the concept wrong, are you saying you consider yourself to stop existing the moment you are 100% focused on your breathing in deep meditation? And that your sense of self is tied to your concepts about it and when those stop then you yourself stop "existing"?

That's the idea behind the Buddhist concept of "no-self" right?

[Anonymous No.11924071]

>>11924047
>are you saying you consider yourself to stop existing the moment you are 100% focused on your breathing in deep meditation?
Yeah
>And that your sense of self is tied to your concepts about it and when those stop then you yourself stop "existing"?
Well, I literally do stop feeling a sense of me-ness when I meditate. There's just breathing, there's no "me" doing the breathing anymore. But also my thoughts about myself obviously cease. So, there's just the neutral experience of breathing, not even UT really going on. I think considering all that it's fine I don't really exist in a meaningful sense during meditation.

[Anonymous No.11924118]

>>11924071
I see, well I don't see it that way, I just see it as altered states of consciousness, in much the same way there is no "you" experiencing a dream, since you are consciously unaware but you don't stop existing just because of that, as proven by spontaneous lucid dreaming, same thing when you reach the state of flow in some activity and get utterly absorbed in it you lose your sense of awareness of your self, and are 100% focused on whatever activity you focused on.

However I still believe underlying those altered states of consciousness and reduced self-awareness is still a permanent self and perhaps even "soul" so this is why I don't really agree with the Buddhist concept of no-self. Self-awareness is altered or ceases, but not the "self", in my view.

[Anonymous No.11924131]

>>11924004
We don't really exist. Not you. Not me. Not anyone or anything..not consciousness. Not existence. Not nonexistence. There is nothing. We are nothing.

[Anonymous No.11924134]

>>11923734
What do you think is the difference between my having that thought, and someone else having the same thought but experiencing it entirely with mental verbalization, do they somehow reach more clarity by verbalizing it, why would that be?

[Anonymous No.11924217]

>>11897088
>Thinking without symbols isn't special. It is useful, sometimes, but also makes it dick to explain thoughts later.

It's probably tradeoffs, like you can think really abstract and even "sense" concepts that others might have trouble trying to wrap their heads around if they try to think of them only concretely (with words or images) like for example the experience of thinking without words or images lmao, but yeah then explaining them in any coherent fashion that they can understand is a hell of a task.

But there are still limitations, I sometimes try to really wrack my brain around and try to imagine a world where there exist more colors than we know, or more materials or states of matter etc, and what that would even be like, and that's a level of conceptual and abstract thinking I enjoy because real word concrete symbols like words and images are utterly useless in this case, only concepts alone can suffice to even try to breach that level of understanding, but its a futile effort because you can't even imagine what that would be like, but you can hold the concept of experiencing that in mind so its a literal mindfuck in some sense, this probably ties into imagination in some form, in that being the ability to imagine whole concepts that do not exist in the real world but only within your mind, so its fun to try to come up with really unique concepts and ideas like that from everything to different forms of social norms, and behaviors to different laws of physics and reality, like say if the concept of the Roche Limit never existed, or whatever.

I wonder how much of that kind of thinking becomes harder to do when you are more used to thinking in words and images, and these are new conceptions and ideas you form that don't have their own specific words and images associated with them.

[Anonymous No.11925153]

>>11923680
can 100% verbal thinkers get really deep artsy stuff?

[Anonymous No.11925198]

you fuckers are really like toddlers when faced with basic psychology/sociology concepts.

[Anonymous No.11925532]

>>11924118
Well, this is a huge and much different discussion altogether, but I'll try to explain my viewpoint too. I've concluded that experience can happen without an ego, a "me", feeling possession over it. When you're dreaming you also feel possession of the things you're experiencing. When you meditate or take some classes of drugs, the "me-ness" feeling stops. So what's tying this neutral experience to you? Just your memory later, if even that. There has to be some connection between the selves, because personal identity can't be something external to the self. If you saw the same red spot in your field of view during all your states, that wouldn't be your identity, as suggested by Hume or somebody like that.

>>11924134
Don't think so necessarily. You see, "a bachelor" is traditionally defined as an unmarried man. But then you're given an example of a gay man living with his unmarried "husband" who can't get legally married. Do we consider him a bachelor? Most of us wouldn't, so the concept was closer to the idea of what a bachelor is than its verbal definition.

>>11924131
Well that's just dumb. You couldn't even stay alive if you believed that.

[Anonymous No.11927360]

>>11899520
With some books it feels really really good to sound out the words. Its why I take a lot longer to read Faulkner. Tbh I hate his stories but the way the words sounds make me fukken jizz.

[Anonymous No.11927377]

>>11894324
Why can't you do both style of thinking simultaneously?

[Anonymous No.11927464]

>>11927377
>why isnt everyone exactly like me???
fuck off retard

[Anonymous No.11928256]

>>11927377
you can but its unnecessary

because eventually you reach the point where you can't think UT without thinking in words first or its a mish-mash of the two and just slows your thinking way down

specialize in either UT or verbal thinking, but not both unless you want really inefficient thinking

[Anonymous No.11928423]

>>11925532
>You couldn't even stay alive if you believed that

How? The illusion of "me" still exists, but I do not.

[Anonymous No.11928727]

>>11894324
Too TRUE, don't become trained into thinking conscious-verbally! Meditate, analyse with a clear mind, eat magic mushrooms.

[Anonymous No.11928761]

>>11894324
The inner voice thing got me thinking. I have a lot of sounds in my head playing near constantly (eg music), however no automatic inner voice. I remember as a child I would say something out loud, then whisper it back to myself. Other people noticed but nonetheless it was a difficult habit to break.

Thinking via the sensory has always been a tool to me. Whether that be converting to a representation where something can be processed or held more easily, building associations for storage, or whatever.

>https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/there-is-no-such-thing-as-conscious-thought/
I remember when this was getting very popular (old idea though, really) and thinking what utter nonsense it was. To say this however, modern day in particular, you'll be gaslit and told you're self deluding and have defense mechanisms and so forth, because there's this imposed notion that we're all both complete and the same. Some one man;s deficit must be everyone else's, as well.

I'd actually like to know the results of Delgado-like experiments on these different sorts of people. The whole thing with the electrodes, and after stimulation the patient would always give some reasons regarding why he himself had "chosen", despite his action having been chosen for him.

[Anonymous No.11928785]

>>11928761
Also, I think conditioning in early childhood plays a role. Of the few times I smoked weed, in each I became a detached "watcher" of the stream of my thoughts, with no ability to act upon them at all. I realized then that in my everyday life I have mental machinery devoted to repeatedly sampling the content of this stream, filtering it, translating, and if necessary redirecting it. This makes it less of a river and more of a pool. It may well be some people don;t have those low level systems of internal control built up, and thus so far as they're concerned, their internal world is just like watching the "movie" of that river. If they need something, they can interject, the processing is done under the surface, then what they wanted appears in the river and they grab it. I iamgine these people have very low dissociative potential and can't split their mind into pieces either (which makes their thought tend towards the linear and serial, than the parallel aside from the most simple cases, perhaps).

Lot to be said here. It's very similar to what Gautama described under the fig tree. Being controlled by your thoughts, rather than exerting a degree of control over them. Reflex, rather than choice. Although too much control, and too much twisting of the mind, also leads to slavery and misery. Slavery to the self, from another angle.

[Anonymous No.11929933]

>>11894597
i think in images....and it started to happen when I became mentally ill....and my grades started to drop to a U....personally to me thinking in words is superior.

[Anonymous No.11929961]

>>11920748
same here, I think...?

[Anonymous No.11930328]

We are classified as Homo sapiens sapiens - he who thinks and knows he thinks, this is our sapience and self-awareness.

Therefore knowing you are thinking applies to UT as well, the fact that people misinterpreted the findings of UT to mean that UT = unaware reaction to thoughts with no capability of inner reflection is hilariously ignorant. Man can become so habituated to utilizing an inner voice or mental picture to supplement his thinking that he loses awareness of his UT altogether, perhaps even coming to believe that unless his thoughts are in symbolized form then he is not thinking them, because he equates concious thought with symbolized representation, now theres some food for thought eh.

[Anonymous No.11930537]

>>11901671
I can't purely imagine things in my head. When I try to imagine 4 and 5 pennies together, I just remember that they make 9. I'm more focused on the colors of the pennies (metallic copper in my head) and the fact that the 5-stack is one segment higher. In other words I can only visualize glimpses of the stacks.

This may be related to the fact that I usually have trouble distinguishing between many similar objects close together, like when asked how many Is in a row I have to divide the Is to know their number like this:
III|III|III
and now I know that there are nine of them. (not dyslexic btw)
So because of this I probably couldn't use the abacus method.
My usual thoughts appear as pure concepts, and when I think harder about something I switch to sentences in my head, usually in a not my native language(usually english), because I find some concepts better described with english words
>>11901713
I have something playing in my head all the time, this may be the cause of my aforementioned non-vocal thinking, as I have found that I cannot process two sources of vocal information at the same time

[Anonymous No.11930660]

Computer analogy:
Symbolized thought = graphical user interface, unsymbolized thought = command line

[Anonymous No.11930680]

>>11930660
Fits perfectly; symbolized though is for plebs since it's slower and unsymbolized is for the übermenschen

[Anonymous No.11930814]

>>11930680
*thought

[Anonymous No.11931117]

>>11930660
Seems that way, but if you want to write or imagine dialogue or script or imagine and draw a beautiful vivid fantasy scene then UT is useless, it is however perfect for coming up with what that fantasy scene may look like due to the rapid speed at which you can come up with concepts with UT

[Anonymous No.11931156]

>>11930660
>>11931117
Also I wonder if its related to efficiency in brain processing and function as well

If you can understand and be aware of what you are thinking/feeling/intuiting/processing/sensing/imagining/contemplating/analyzing with only UT at any given moment then there is no need to slow down that process with the inefficiency of visualizing/verbalizing it with symbols and so the only time you need to do that is when you are trying to explain your cognitions in the written or spoken word, having to do that for every thought is just horribly inefficient in comparison.

I think visual/verbal processing alone or with both at the same time takes up more mental resources than just UT alone

[Anonymous No.11931181]

>>11930328
He who clamps early, and knows he clamps early. Yet continues to clamp early.

[Anonymous No.11932474]

>>11901598
>I wonder if the lack thereof is the reason behind the slow progress of general artificial intelligence.

digital computing = specialized AI
analog computing = generalized AI

With analog computers your limited only by signal interference. With infinite fidelity you can have infinite information density. Analog computing is necessary to get that depths of thought that the human mind has. This is actually very relevant to this thread. As the human mind gains more skill and practice at interpreting and separating the signals (fourier transform?) greater and greater depth of unsigned thought can be achieved on an unconscious or semi-conscious level. It's like like learning to overclock your brain for unlimited parallel processing power. It can be physically taxing and exhausting for the brain to "overclock" it in this way. Which is why people who do this often need comparatively more alone/down time to rest, and are thus often perceived as introverted for requiring this period of rest/recovery.

[Anonymous No.11933703]

>>11894324
>We’ve scientifically proven we’re fundamentally different but WE SWEAR we’re still equal lol
Gee, where have I heard this cope before from researchers studying cognitive determinism? I’m certainly not saying having an internal monologue makes you SMARTER per se, but it makes being self aware of your own thoughts and calculations far easier. People with internal monologues are able to examine and recalibrate their thinking process. Essentially it means that internal monologue makes a mind far more predisposed to self doubt. The NPC meme essentially suggests that lacking this mechanism for greater mental coordination leaves NPCs less aware of what they think and therefore unable to adjust or discard those assumptions. NPCs look inward with less clarity and more murkiness, meaning they are less aware of where their thoughts and assumptions originate from and it makes them less capable of “creating” novel interpretations. An internal monologue aids you in the coordination of your thought processes and calculations but probably makes you less adept at socializing because you can’t just instantly “speak” on impulse and instead have to filter through the internal monologue in your head before you actually “emote”. You have an additional filter instead of speaking on impulse. What’s more interesting is that people with internal monologues have to create new words for new things in order to think about them, which is why we have words like “abstract” or “inchoate” or “Polymorphous” instead of just “not real” “I don’t understand” and “weird”.

[Anonymous No.11934176]

>>11932474
>It's like like learning to overclock your brain for unlimited parallel processing power. It can be physically taxing and exhausting for the brain to "overclock" it in this way. Which is why people who do this often need comparatively more alone/down time to rest, and are thus often perceived as introverted for requiring this period of rest/recovery.

Shit son now we're on to something, just recently read about somatotypes, what do you think is the likelihood that those who can function this way and utilize and are familiar with their UT the most are most likely to be ectotonic/extreme ectotonic in appearance https://www.innerexplorations.com/catpsy/t1c4.htm due to the brain requiring extra processing power so the body doesn't get as much attention in comparison? It applies to me for sure

[Anonymous No.11934295]

>>11933703
>but it makes being self aware of your own thoughts and calculations far easier. People with internal monologues are able to examine and recalibrate their thinking process
You can do just that with UT as well and I have done so many times in order to get to the "root" of something.

>Essentially it means that internal monologue makes a mind far more predisposed to self doubt.
Ironic you say that as I am always full of self-doubt in fact in every one of these posts I made ITT I had severe doubt behind them as I can always think of another alternative, or that I'm aiming way higher, or may be far off the mark etc... There is no difference between having a UT thought and self-doubting its validity (again with UT) vs. having a thought verbalized and doubting its validity with your own inner voice. It's the same process, sans one step.

>leaves NPCs less aware of what they think
Once again in arguing this point you make the mistake of assuming erroneously that you can only "think" if you are thinking in symbolized form (inner monologue or mental imagery) and that UT thought somehow doesn't count, which is just misinterpreting the UT cognitive style altogether.

>meaning they are less aware of where their thoughts and assumptions originate from
Also wrong, I have had no compromised ability to interpret, reinterpret or consider alternative perspectives of my UT thoughts. Pray tell how verbalizing your thoughts aids in this respect any more than not-verbalizing them, you are still aware of them all the same. The internal level of awareness of your thoughts/assumptions/impulses has less to do with your cognitive style and more with your level of introspection.

[Anonymous No.11934301]

>>11934295
>but probably makes you less adept at socializing because you can’t just instantly “speak” on impulse and instead have to filter through the internal monologue in your head before you actually “emote”. You have an additional filter instead of speaking on impulse.
Same filtering happens with UT as well, and I am terrible at socializing because I don't practice with an inner monologue all day, when you are familiar with speech it comes easily and naturally, but when you spend 90% of your time inside your head with your own word-less thoughts then its always awkward when you need to speak and convert the specific idea/feeling/concept/intent of your thoughts into immediate verbal form, so I'm terrible at speaking on the spot.

It's really strange how you assume the opposite, remember that the Psychology Today study found internal monologue thinking is the most common, remember how the author had to convince people that UT even exists, with this study, because it's so unknown to your average person. And our society is one obsessed with talking and speaking the first word on their minds on impulse instead of filtering that through a moment of momentary self-awareness.

>What’s more interesting is that people with internal monologues have to create new words for new things in order to think about them, which is why we have words like “abstract” or “inchoate” or “Polymorphous” instead of just “not real” “I don’t understand” and “weird”.
The concept of abstract was first thought about before the word "abstract" was created to describe it, that implies UT thought processes as otherwise you are saying before the word is invented you cannot think about the concept itself, which is absurd.

[Anonymous No.11934305]

>>11934301
>have to create new words for new things in order to think about them
What the absolute fuck, in order to share their thoughts with others yes but not in order to just think about them, otherwise how do concepts and ideas in peoples heads become shared and widely spread ideas? By converting them to words or pictures others can understand, as no one else can mind read your own unsymbolized thoughts.

We know this is true because there are words that describe concepts in other languages that have no equivalent word in the English language https://www.lexico.com/explore/foreign-words-and-phrases, but that doesn't mean the concept/feeling/idea itself doesn't exist for us

[Anonymous No.11934610]

>>11934305
It’s harder to think about any concept when you haven’t precisely defined it. When your just going by pure intuition, it’s easy for things to stay nebulous or for things that are slightly different to seamlessly flow into each other in your head. There’s a reason why English has been the language of scientific innovation for centuries. That isn’t to say that economic development and every other contributor to the development of science wasn’t also necessary, but it simply can’t be a coincidence that the language with the largest number of words is also the language of technical innovation as that requires specificity. Due to its history, English is often left with two words from two different languages that original were interchangeable but which acquired distinct definitions over time. Technical specificity is aided by the vast number of words in English and having words to define abstract concepts allows you to have greater specificity and precision.
>>11934295
I don’t even believe there really is such a hard division between people who think in various ways. A plurality of people probably use both or one more than the other and I’m not saying you’re dumber or completely incapable of whatever, I’m just explaining how having an internal monologue can give you certain advantages. Other people might be, but I’m not saying your broken. You probably think with an internal monologue occasionally and don’t know it, particularly when you’re writing I would imagine. I’m not the one saying people predominant in vernal thinking are the only ones capable of certain cognitive processes, I’m only saying they’re probably more predisposed to a certain deftness at them. If they have schizophrenia, for instance, it’s doubtful any internal monologue would be of use to them. Some thinking styles bring advantages, whether they’re utilized properly or their weaknesses are overcome is another problem.

[Anonymous No.11934694]

>>11934610
>It’s harder to think about any concept when you haven’t precisely defined it.
I wouldn't say so, I have many concepts/ideas/realizations/identified patterns/etc.. in my head that I never symbolized down to verbal spoken form and it isn't any more difficult to think about them when I want to, or to refer to them in association with something else I'm thinking about or encountering and to see how that all relates or not.

>You probably think with an internal monologue occasionally and don’t know it, particularly when you’re writing I would imagine
Trust me I would definitely know it as I went from thinking purely in unsymbolized thought for many years over to a mix of the two and the only thing I noticed is more distraction and while certain words or phrases to say do pop up its not like the entirety of what I'm about to write is known to me in internalized verbal form before I get to writing, often leading to as you see quite long posts because verbalization for me tends to happen only upon explanation to others. It seems advantages from primarily thinking in inner monologue come in the form of those that aid in social/speaking skills and ability. Whenever I day dream I also tend to do so non-verbally as my dialogue is so atrocious its embarrassing even to me, but that doesn't matter to me as much that I'd venture to improve it by utilizing inner monologues more.

[Anonymous No.11934824]

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/concepts/

>4.2 The priority between language and concepts

>The arguments for deciding between these two positions involve a mixture of theoretical and empirical considerations. Proponents of the first view have claimed that language is ambiguous in ways that thought presumably is not. For example, the natural language sentence everyone loves someone could be interpreted to mean that for each person, there is some person that they love, or to mean that everyone loves one and the same person. Proponents of the first view have also argued that since language itself has to be learned, thought is prior to language. A third and similar consideration is that people seem to be able formulate novel concepts which are given a linguistic label later; the concept comes first, the linguistic label second

>Proponents of the alternative view—that some thinking occurs in language—have pointed to the phenomenology of thought. It certainly seems as if we are thinking in language when we “hear” ourselves silently talking to ourselves (Carruthers 1996; see also Langland-Hassan & Vicente 2018 on the nature and significance of inner speech). Another type of consideration that proponents of this view highlight is the finding that success on certain tasks (e.g., spatial reorientation that relies on combining landmark information with geometrical information) is selectively impaired when the linguistic system is engaged but not when comparable attention is given to non-linguistic distractors. The suggestion is that solving these tasks requires thinking in one’s natural language and that some of the crucial concepts must be couched linguistically

[Anonymous No.11934826]

>>11934694
>trust me
All your “evidence” is you just telling me your really smart and I’m supposed to just “trust” that, meanwhile you’re telling me you’ve never ever verbalized anything in your head in your whole life and would immediately know if you did and I’m supposed to trust that as well.
You have to be pretty low in self awareness to be constantly aggrandizing your own intelligence, and using yourself as an anecdotal example of how people like you are the smartestest in the whole wide world.
>I’m smart, trust me bro! Me smart! Me me me me!
https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/42797834-f030-4137-89ca-3e2138a5388e

[Anonymous No.11934830]

>>11934826
>meanwhile you’re telling me you’ve never ever verbalized anything in your head in your whole life and would immediately know if you did and I’m supposed to trust that as well.
You didn't even finish reading the full sentence before typing out this tirade, you lazy bastard!

>Trust me I would definitely know it as I went from thinking purely in unsymbolized thought for many years over to a mix of the two and the only thing I noticed is more distraction

[Anonymous No.11934846]

>>11934830
My point is that you seem to be basing your entire argument on anecdotes solely revolving around yourself and it doesn’t matter whether you say you only think in colors or only think in quadratic formulas because I have no way of verifying what your saying about yourself is true or manipulated solely for the sake of winning arguments.

[Anonymous No.11934858]

>>11934846
Fair enough.

[Anonymous No.11934965]

Language and thought are not the same thing: evidence from neuroimaging and neurological patients
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4874898/

Engaging the non-linguistic mind.
https://derby.openrepository.com/handle/10545/622287

Non-Linguistic Thinking
https://steemit.com/philosophy/@kanggary/non-linguistic-thinking

[Anonymous No.11934972]

>>11934965
Good mix of scholarly, academic and anecdotal accounts of non-linguisting thinking among these 4 links

This last one is tripping up the spam filter for some reason so I'll link to it via google (first result)

Language and non-linguistic thinking
https://www.google.com/search?-b-1-d&q=oxford+handbooks+Language+and+non-linguistic+thinking

[Anonymous No.11934999]

>>11934176
Wild speculation here, but it could have to do with the vagus nerve being better at transporting information about food requirements from the intestines to the brain. Just a hunch but I think due to it's length there may be some signal degradation so the information it transports loses it's detail/complexity. Maybe these people have more myelin (or something to a similar effect) that allows greater information density to travel along the vagus nerve. The body/brain then learns to never craves more than it requires. That's my unfounded schizo theory anyway.