Get Your Smart On
I recently posted what I thought was a rather strange question to Notes:
“This is going to sound like a strange question, but what does thinking feel like, for you? If you had to describe it, maybe there is an adept analogy…”
Turns out many of you had something to say about this, and I love each and every response I got. I’m not gonna call you out by user name, but feel free to identify yourselves if you would like.
Some wanted more specificity (thinking about what?) or shared what it was like to think about mostly unpleasant, very particular things — the state of the world, throwing their work laptop on the street so that it is run over and shattered to pieces (way to “show, not tell”!), finding themselves awake at 3am.1 I know that we usually talk about things, and think about things, and are focused on all the things. But take “the thing” out of the equation, and ask yourself: What does it feel like to think, full stop?
There is a certain feeling that I have not been able to describe.
I was looking for an image or analogy. One person offers the image of it being like running a needle across wood grain, feeling the grooves and bumps, and that tactile image really resonated for me. They describe this image of thinking as having a linear path, but not being straight, which is just such a wonderful way to think of thinking. It made me think of how:
“For me it’s a tactile thing, and it feels like trying to thread a needle. When I nail it I feel like I got the thread to pass through the opening, and it’s very satisfying. The idea of touching a surface with a tool to feel the contours and texture is provocative; I learned to think writing with a writing utensil on paper, making contact with the paper is part of it I think.
Thinking is a kind of touching, isn’t it? Maybe an indirect touching since you can’t see what you are feeling. Don’t we say that we feel our way around… something, an idea?”
I will add now that writing things out longhand is crucial for learning how to think - I don’t know how younger generations are going to adapt this, if they will be able to move away from the act of physically writing things and how that hand-head connection is made. Anyhow, what I wanted to add is that we don’t look at what we are writing, but simply leave marks on the page that signify. Writing, in this sense, is largely tactile, not only visual.
Someone describes thinking as loud, very loud, painfully loud. A cacophony dulled by doing one’s thinking at a loud cafe where ambient noise can help you to focus. That is curious to me, it surprised me and fills me with wonder, that for some people thinking is full of sound.
Not sure if you have come across this yet, but there is a (new?) genre of focus aid on YouTube, where they take a piece of classical music and slow it down into an hours long piece. It’s like white noise in that you can ignore it in the background, but at the same time your brain is still picking up on the underlying pattern. Even though you could not consciously “read” it as music, your brain — the amazing pattern-making machine — locks into the pattern, which I imagine acts as a guardrail that then allows you to stay focused better, longer.
Our newfound cultural obsession with focus. Focus is now an issue for us.
“ …not thinking about, but what does it feel like when you are holding a thought in your head, turning it around to see it from different sides, trying to make it fit with other thoughts. Say you are re-writing an essay and there is a paragraph that no longer fits where it is, and you are thinking of where else it could fit in.”
Someone argues that thought has no feeling, because if it did, it would be one of three things: pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. They say that maybe I was creating a false opposition between feeling and thought. They say the mind is a sixth sense.
I don’t know about that. I think thought has many feelings, maybe too many, but also (and maybe I am holding two truths here) thinking is always pleasurable, and besides (three truths?) thinking is a feeling.
There, I said it. That is the underlying assumption that I had and could not see before this: I am implying that thinking is a kind of feeling, with my question.
There is an empiricist view that our perceptive abilities lead to sensations, and that those sensations are the building blocks for mind and thought. (In Continental Philosophy we would use the terms consciousness and thinking, a gerund.2) Feelings are just judgments about sensations, not to be trusted, and should be minimized. We want to take feelings out of thought, according to the regime of objectivity.
Taking a leap here, but the current discussion about Artificial General Intelligence being possible thought a scale jump from data to sentience is so wrong because it is based on this very poor understanding about feelings and consciousness both. Data, knowledge, wisdom, not the same. Anyhooo….
Another person describes thinking as having a lot of tabs open in a web browser, becoming overheated, and getting “cooked.” Thinking is exhausting, overwhelming.
No doubt thinking is taxing, and requires a napping lifestyle. I definitely know when my brain is full, and that it’s time for a nap.
There is also poetry in many of your answers - sloshing wine, madness, humor, and more. Being drunk is not a bad analogy. For me, when I am able to get an idea down on paper, read it back, feels exhilarating. The work of creative thinking can feel a little like an altered state. That includes the process of making art as well.
“Thinking is weird, it often feels like we don’t control it, especially in it’s more creative aspects. You see how I made a connection from what you said ‘brain won’t shut off /shut up’ to meditation because in meditation one tries to quiet thoughts. Totally effortless, I didn’t intend to go there, but that is where I went when I thought about what you said.”
You’ve made me think of an even more difficult question: for those of you who meditate, what does it feel like not to think?
To be continued…