Prephilosophical Notions of Thinking

This is a philosophical analysis of commonly held notions and concepts about thinking and mind. The empirically derived notions are inadequate and insufficient for a deeper understanding of thought itself, but this prephilosophical understanding of thinking leads to a more refined and profound distinction of different forms of thought and their prominent common features of aspectuality and relativity. [German Version] What is the average person's notion of thinking? What is the answer of someone who is confronted with the practice of everyday life when asked what thinking is? Will she be able to answer that question? The answer to the question what thinking means would be as diverse as the views and opinions of people. However, there are basic and common patterns in those answers. Let's examine some of those possible answers: 1. Thinking means to consider, to think about, give thought to, ponder 2. When opening the mouth, i.e. when speaking, I'm thinking 3. When focussing on something, when being occupied intensely with something, I'm thinking 4. Thinking is the ability of the human being to order and structure her daily activities 5. Thinking distinguishes the human being from the animal 6. Thinking is sound common sense 7. All conscious activities of the human being appertain to thinking 8. Thinking is the product of neuro-chemical processes in the brain 9. Whenever the human being acts intentionally, thinking is presupposed 10. Thinking means having insight into and understanding of some subject matter A host of different views are conceivable. Let us now examine those 10 statements more closely and attempt to reveal their particular principles and structures. What strikes us at first is that they are NOT definitions of thinking but instances of what thinking may represent. Socrates once blamed his pupils of committing this general fallacy, as they were asked to define a particular concept, but instead enumerated examples of it. This lack of abstraction is typical of the average person because we usually refer in thinking only to concrete objects of the world. Even when employing abstract concepts, such as generic or specific concepts, there is always a reference to the concrete material world. In the case of concepts such as love, happiness, joy etc. concrete ideas and associations to experiences always exist. As soon as asked to formulate those concepts generically, the average person rarely transcends the level of concrete reference. The habitual and linguistic patterns are usually interlocked too strongly with the particular events of our world and therefore hardly enables us to overcome them without effort. And if we still succeed, there is the great danger of getting entangled into speculations, contradictions and absurdities. Abstract thinking must be learned just as concrete thinking. Since, however, concrete, practical thinking seems closer to us because we use it every day, we hastily conclude that abstract thinking is vain and useless, because we think that it has no direct relationship to the objective world. However, this is only one of the many errors which the average person succumbs to. Let us now examine the above statements more closely: 1. Thinking means to consider, to think about, give thought to, ponder Thinking is understood as a conscious act of thought, i.e. only when using the ability of thinking with full awareness, I'm thinking, not however, when carrying out e.g. a routine activity or looking at a landscape. An act of will or a volitional incentive is necessary to activate thinking. Now, here's the problem with this view: will is assumed to be extraneous to thinking, i.e. I can will to do something without initiating an act of thought. That is very questionable as shown by our daily experience: for example, if we want to move from a lying position to a standing position, we need a motivating impulse for movement in addition to the will. Why do I want to get up? Because I've got to go to work. This is a thought process that precedes volition. Feelings and emotions, too, are not included in thinking as understood in this view. When thinking, feeling is turned off. That assumption is again refuted by practice: emotion can sometimes become so dominating a force in our thinking that it affects our thought processes in such a way that we often behave irrationally and then later, when considering our actions from hindsight, we realize that we acted based on emotions rather than logical thinking. I call this concept of thought, eliminative concept of thinking, because it excludes all other abilities of the human being and assumes as valid only the act of thinking as such. We will see that pure thinking is possible, however not in the sense as applied in this empirical view of thinking, but as used in philosophical thinking. 2. When opening the mouth, i.e. when speaking, I'm thinking This is not only the general view of most people but seems to be a fundamental thesis of analytical philosophy and linguistics. Language determines thinking. The way we speak determines the way we employ concepts in our thinking. This thesis does not equate language with thinking but states that language precedes thinking. By learning the language in our childhood, we also learned thinking by acquiring the necessary concepts. Therefore, thinking is reduced here to concepts, grammar and syntax. The verbal act of speech is not only the medium of language (as in this statement). There is also what we call inner speech, i.e. when thinking in silence we use language and the concepts of language which we learned. Therefore, during the act of unpronounced thinking we stay within the structure of language which is also a social structure. We will see that this modern analytic-linguistical theory of thought refers solely to the practical thinking of everyday life, but when expanded to thinking in general and to philosophical thinking in particular, it is no longer tenable. I call this concept of thought, linguistic-analytical concept of thinking. 3. When focusing on something, when being occupied intensely with something, I'm