[miika]

How do you define “thinking”?

To me thinking is primary tool of communication between I and “me” and it’s entirely based on sound and language.

Can you think without using language?

When you have song playing in your head, how is that different from your thoughts?

Isn’t talking out loud just act of thinking, the output being connected to mouth?

Have you ever tried to repeat mantra in your thought, slow down until coming to full stop? What remains when thinking stops?

Have you noticed that thinking is like breathing, in a way that it’s happening automatically and you can also take over?

Have you noticed that thinking consciously is linked with breath and being aware of space?

Fascinating topic!

[082349872349872]

To me most communication between I and "me" occurs in symbol arrangements, not sound and language.

This can be annoying: when my wife asks me what I'm thinking about, if I'm thinking about something relatively linguistic (an HN comment, say), it's easy to tell her. Otherwise, I need a fair amount of time and effort to make the consecutive interpretation (and forget about simultaneous!).

Further evidence that my thought is not especially language-mediated: my wife and I share a little over three languages in common; however translating into any of these is about as difficult as any other, suggesting that the original thought is equally "far away" from all of them.

[jbkly7]

Most of my thinking is not in language, though I do sometimes talk to myself in my head. If someone asks me what I'm thinking or feeling, it sometimes takes great effort to translate it into words; and when I do attempt to express it I often feel the words are pretty inadequate. Like encoding a high-res image into a few pixels, or music into a few notes. Super interesting topic indeed.

[tamimio]

Thinking is more than just communication; it involves reasoning, problem-solving, etc., according to the paper. You can definitely think without using language, such as while driving, flying, or even playing sports. A subcategory of thinking probably requires language, one that will be used to communicate with others, like addressing an issue at work or even writing a comment here.