ever thought about thinking?

[casrip1@gmx.com]

so today i was think, and then i thought about thinking... literally... before continuing, take a couple minutes right now and think about something, anything

 

now think: the thought you just thought of was thought up in a language you speak... language is something we use to communicate our thoughts to someone else. so why would we need language to think for ourselves. so when we think we're thinking, we're not really thinking, but talking to our brain, who is actually doing the thinking and then putting those thoughts into words so that we can understand what it (the brain) is thinking...

 

so we have no idea of what we're thinking about except that which our brain decides to let us know by translating it to a language we can understand

Edited August 1, 2013 by casrip1@gmx.com

[EdEarl]

Only some thought is verbal. Think about a painting, a melody, or throwing a ball and you can think about non-verbal thoughts. Think about the two hemispheres of your brain. The corpus callosum connects the two sides of our brains. The two sides cooperate, but also have individual characteristics.

[Greg H.]

I think you've actually stumbled upon the difference between thinking and talking to yourself, though that's just my opinion. Try this:

 

Throw a ball at someone else with the intention of putting the ball exactly where they can catch it. Your brain just did what it actually a fairly involved physics calculation, automatically accounting for distance, overall area the catcher can intercept the thrown ball, the weight of the ball, and a thousand other minute variables, and you did it without ever "thinking" a word.

 

You don't say in your head "I need this ball to go where Fred can catch it" You just pick up the ball and throw it at Fred.

Edit: Although I have a hypothesis that if you really want to know someone's native tongue, walk up to them and kick them in the shin as hard you can. Chances are whatever tongue they start yelling at you at is either their native tongue or the one they use most frequently.

 

At that point though you may want to run away.

Edited August 1, 2013 by Greg H.