Do we think in words or feelings or something else?

I don’t know the actual answer to this, and the only way that I can describe it is by saying that I think in thoughts. I feel like my thoughts are a unique experience, it isn’t a feeling or a word or comparable to anything else.

I don’t think “feelings” is the word to use. Maybe concepts? From my own experience, I’d say I usually think in concepts but I think in words near the end of the process. (But I may be unique in this. I play out conversations in my head when I’m trying to sort out a sticky situation).

I don’t know if there’s a definitive answer, but I think in words, and experience feelings as a result of those thoughts.

Edit: Often, there are pictures in there, too, but they are always accompanied by words.

I always hear my own voice; I never think in images…never feelings.

If I developed the ability to image or feel, I would probably be more creative and/or successful.

I’ve opted instead to practice silencing “my voice” and produced more peace of mind and serenity.

Welcome to Fluther. I know that this reincarnation of mine has less lurve than you do, so that seems ironic, but… I’ve been here for awhile. So, welcome.

I ‘think’ in words. I tend to think logically and analytically, so all of my ‘think’ thinking tends to be in words (or numbers, if I’m doing mathematical analysis, budgeting, figuring if I have enough gas to get to the next exit, etc.). In fact, it tends to be even more ordered than that: I think in syllogisms (and complete sentences, ordered lists, and other structured ways) when I can, and that’s more often than not.

Which is not to say that I’m a robot or android. I have feelings, too. I emote in colors.

It does not make sense to me that we think only in words, but I think words play an important part. There must be a continuous interplay between words and what the words stand for. Part of this has to be the way our memories are stored, and I know that they contain more than words. For example, you can imagine the taste of an orange or a hamburger. There is no way that words can be used for this. As another example, suppose someone says something and you initially can’t figure out what the words were, but on thinking about it for a moment you can figure it out. In order to do that, the sounds have to be somehow stored in our minds.

@CWOTUS I’m with you there.

Except, of course, when I discovered my analysis didn’t always offer the correct solution.

You know…

If I knew as much
as I thought I did
how the hell did I end up HERE?

That revelation started me down the path toward being less analytical.

@SABOTEUR

Ah, yes. I tend to (or at least try to) check my analysis at the door when I’m thinking about ‘people’ and it has no place in my head when I’m thinking about ‘women’. I should have said “when I’m thinking about ‘things’.

Thanks for pointing out the error of omission.

@CWOTUS

I’m inclined to say I wasn’t correcting you, merely making an observation…but I recognize that’s my urge to over-analyze remarks, as well as my insecurity kicking in by refusing to simply shut-up and accept a compliment, so…

…you’re welcome.

(3rd edit of this remark, by the way…)

Both or all of the above.

Heinlein says that we think in terms of symbols.

Heinlein should think for himself.

Well, I take that back. Words are symbols for the things/people they represent, so Heinlein’s statement is literally correct.

@SABOTEUR He did. Mostly in reaction to the idea of “pure thought.”
My minute-to-minute decisions are not words. More like:
Desire: internet. Time left :sufficient for internetting. Fluther! TvTropes! Jyver! Drudge! tabtabtabtabtab. And so on, a concatenation of ideas flushing me along until I find myself on a Wikipedia article about suspension bridges.

For some interesting reading I suggest looking up “synesthesia”. Absolutely fascinating how some people think and remember things.

@Nullo Now that you mention it, there are instances that occur that I feel or sense, rather than verbalize.

This, for lack of a better term, are brief “glimpses of awareness” or a brief but urgent feeling to do something NOW.

I immediately proceed to screw it up by mentally verbalizing something like, “I’ll do it in a minute” or “OK…can’t forget to do that”, in which case I remember what I was supposed to do a half hour after it was supposed to have been done, and I always suffer the (negative) consequences for not responding immediately.

So, as inconvenient as it is, I’m gradually learning to pay attention to those impressions and to act accordingly.

I think in words, feelings, concepts, and pictures.

I recently read an account by a researcher who was investigating the question of what the cognitive landscape would be of someone raised without exposure to language of any kind. She encountered a man, Latin American, who was born profoundly deaf and in a remote environment devoid of signing. No effort had been made to educate the man. No private signing system had been developed within his family. He was nevertheless a functional adult, able to work and survive independently.

The researcher undertook to try to teach the man to sign. She soon realized that the entire world of symbolism was foreign to him. He was eager to understand what she was getting at, but simply imitated her gestures, clearly without getting that they referred to something else. She describes the moment when he realized this. He enthusiastically began going from object to object, soliciting the sign from her. He had just realized the potential for things to have names.

His language developed quickly from that point, but the researcher was anxious to know what it had been like for him to be in the world without language. He rebuffed all of her inquiries on the matter. He would just say, “Why would anyone want to know about that? Those were the stupid times”. Maybe there was just no way to express that state of being.

There has also been some interesting research that suggests that thought is subservient to feeling. In other words, feelings come first, and thought is the brain’s mechanism for making sense of the feelings, encoding them in language in order to rationalize and incorporate them in one’s cognitive worldview.

That understanding agrees well with current theories about the functioning of the cerebral hemispheres. The right hemisphere lacks language, but feels and intuits. The left hemisphere takes its cues about what needs attending to from the intuitions of the right, and then spins the rational framework for those intuitions using its language capacities.

The more I think about it, I would guess that if we think only in words, symbols, pictures, numbers, etc… we wouldn’t have insights or “aha” moments. There has to be something else (which many of us immediately put into words).

Two thoughts on ways to look into this question:
1) Neuro-science. If anyone with biology chops can chime in I think it would be helpful.
2) Dream analysis. AFAIK, dreams are “raw thoughts” in a sense and so analyzing them might be helpful.

Seems like thinking is done with concepts, symbols, archetypes, with which we have words associated. One’s experience of it probably has a lot to do with whether one is more visually oriented or verbally oriented, and more toward rational or emotive.

I think we “think” or begin to initially process in feelings or emotion. Some kind of primal processing that proceeds actual language. Language is merely the framework in which we translate our “thoughts” into something that readily relates to the world around us (other people, concepts and self).

Basically a more babble-y, personal take of what thorninmud already said.

Personally, I hear myself thinking in words and at the same time feel as well.

I think in a little bit of everything, all the senses are at play when I think…emotions, words, sights, sounds, smells, cotton candy, jasmine and 12 gauge Remingtons!

What happens in the upper hierarchies of our minds sometimes takes the form of words but there is a lot going on beneath the surface that can be considered thinking but which doesn’t use language. The stove is hot; I must pull my hand away. If we had to wait for the words to form we would be burned. Our subconscious is much more in control of our consciousness than our consciousness is in control of our subconscious, contrary to what we might think.

When we see a painting or listen to music our minds are engaged at a high level before we even try, often vainly, to convey what we experience. Feelings and thoughts emerge first, before language attempts to express in words what we already know.

And then there is poetry, that realm where words assert a power upon the mind.

@thorninmud

I think the researcher missed what the subject told her very, very clearly: “Those were the stupid times.”

That’s exactly what he would have been: stupid. Obviously, he would have been able to recognize some patterns and understand how the world functions. Even dogs don’t always get run over by the family car, because in some way they understand (without thinking of the words or concepts) that the car has “mass”, “it moves”, “those black round things roll” [without having anything other than pattern concepts to ‘think’ of any of those terms: “black”, “round”, “roll”] and so on.

But dogs are, really, pretty stupid… until they learn how to associate some words with some actions that please their masters, and manage to “obey” ... and until they also learn to verbalize some of their own feelings: “I want to go outside”; “I want to come inside”; “I want to eat”; “I’m so happy to see you”, etc.

Puppies are cute but stupid. This man knows that without words, symbols, concepts or a way to think, that he was stupid, too. He told the researcher that.

Reasoning is often conducted with words.

I remember reading a theory of thinking quite some time ago that said that we use prototypes to represent a certain word. For example, the theory says that if we use the term “bird,” we create an image of a songbird about the size of a robin and that we would be a bit started to find that the bird in question was an ostrich.

I think different people think in different ways. With me it’s mostly words, heard in my own voice.

Thought