Thoughts on Thought

Thoughts are constituted by and situated within the language in which they are thought. Thoughts do not merely consist of words, they are barely anything but the words themselves. Barely, and yet certainly a bit more than "mere" words. The problem here is that we are accustomed to think of words as being "mere", that is to say, as lacking a certain something that they never actually lack. Never is a word expressed without a certain affective sensibility. That is to say, there is always something else besides the strict reference of a word that is "going on" when a word is exchanged. It is always accompanied by the sense in which it is expressed, whether or not that is lost in translation.

And so, though I say that there is barely anything but the words themselves in thoughts, I say this only with reference to our prejudice of thinking of words as lacking an accompanying sensitivity. The literal truth is that there is absolutely nothing in thought but words. This is not to say that thought may be understood simply, for words are no less complex than thoughts.

If thoughts and words and just as complex as one another, why make this shift at all? Should we not be aiming, in our discussion, toward making the complex simpler and more comprehensible? But while this does encompass part of our method, it would be a crime to present a complex matter in a way that did not do justice to its complexity. Sometimes simplification is oversimplification.

In making the move from thoughts to words, I am steering our line of inquiry toward certain peculiar insights of Wittgenstein. In the Blue and Brown Books, he suggested that thought may consist precisely in the expression of thought, and nothing enigmatic or mysterious besides that very performance of thinking. He suggests we consider the possibility that, when someone is writing, the organ of thought may just be the writing hand, and not the mind. For what is a thought besides its expression? There is no disjunction between thought and expression, and so no reason to think them distinct from one another.

Now, all this is very disquieting. Surely I know what it is to think. Surely thought is something that occurs separate and distinct from expression. After all, I think all the time! Who is Wittgenstein to dispute my private experience? I know what I know, and for such matters there is nothing anyone can say that can bring these matters to doubt.

It is my contention that there is such a thing as thought outside of communicative expression. What then, is my experience of thought, and how may I adequately describe it, such that it may be shown to have an existence apart from expression?

I consider thought to be principally an auditory phenomenon. When I hear someone speak, the words reach my ears and travel through them into my brain, where they reside and gradually grow to become residual. It is the same way with thought outside of interaction. Thought occurs not in the brain, but rather in certain self-agitated reverberations of the inner ear. I know not thought outside of being able to hear my own thoughts.

With words, there is never expression without impression; and whenever there is expression, there is both content and mood. There is no separating expression from impression, no separating the communication of meaning from the evocation of emotional response. But already I am presenting an inaccurate picture. There is not simply a speaker attempting to impart information on the one hand, and a listener responding emotionally on the other. Rather, there is content and mood involved both in the expression of a speaker and in the impression of a listener. There is no separating content from mood; there is no separating expression from impression.

It is in this way that, when we think, we become both speaker and listener without any speech or expression proper occurring to mediate the interaction with ourselves. In so thinking, the wrapping up of content with mood and expression with impression becomes an intensified complex of activity. For, in merely thinking, one is not limited by the confines of a medium of communication. In speaking, one may only speak so quickly, but there seems to be no such limitation on the rapidity of thought, even for those who do no possess an extraordinary mental capacity. One need not be brilliant in order to think much; one need not be a genius in order to have much to say.

In all of this mental activity, we must continuously refer back to the actuality that is thought, that is to say, the exchange of words. Although we may be able to think in a seemingly unlimited fashion, the quicker we think the quicker we lose our train of thought, for the simple reason that the more is said, the less one listens. In everyday interactions this is a common understanding, but when we are involved in interacting with ourselves alone, we fancy that different rules apply and so quickly disregard the principle of pace. But this principle is just as true here as it is in society. The more quickly you think, the less you pay yourself attention.

This is especially dangerous, for as we noted above, when speech becomes internalized, the complex of interaction becomes only more complex and more liable to lead to misunderstandings. Here again we encounter a common understanding that is oddly disregarded simply because the circumstances have changed. We all know that misunderstandings between people are inevitable, and so we constantly adjust the way that we speak in order to minimize misunderstandings. But when we are alone with our own thoughts, we deny ourselves this possibility. What could be more obvious but that it is impossible to misunderstand oneself? What could be more obvious but that nearly everyone does?