Unsymbolized Thinking

You can not have complex thinking without language

All the angry NPC's in this thread. Comedy gold

What I find really funny about this is how the user/s who took the psychology today study and ran with it misinterpreting its conclusions were definitely sub-vocalizing thinkers who never experienced thinking without an accompanying inner monologue and so rather than admit to the fact that other people can think in different ways and that their experience is not the only experience out there they instead believed it evidence for their "NPC" meme.

The study mentioned how many people don't think thinking without inner language and sub-vocalization is possible, and it attempts to show that it is and people do it, but rather than accept that, the user/s just ignored that part of the study and twisted its findings to support their NPC meme delusions

And now this misinformation is spreading, and once misinformation and false beliefs spread they are almost impossible to correct, people will go around now thinking others around them are NPC's or "p-zombies" based off the efforts of one or many anons spreading the meme and providing "evidence" that they twisted to support their delusions

It's all so tiresome

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behold! two npcs communicate!

Behold! a moron speaks!

t. angry NPC

How can an NPC be angry if they can't experience qualia and therefore not know they are feeling angry?

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It's a program but I wouldn't expect a npc to know that

>thinking without words/images
This isn't possible, thinking requires visualization or symbolism such as words which would just be a proxy for visualising
A lack of that is a lack of thought

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That's under the assumption the brain works/functions like a computer which is a common misconception

the assumption is correct

>he's never had a wordless, picture-less insight come into his conscious awareness which he fully understood without needing words/symbols/images to accompany it

Yes it is possible, its kind of like that, only its also feelings, impression, action, just an "instant knowing", like I said, if there is mental imagery or sub-vocalization it comes after the thought.

To understand this one must understand that "thought" does not only include mental words and pictures.

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the only way to think like that is through repetition in a scenario extremely familiar. you are a npc

Provide evidence then faggot

>its all according to plan
You can try to act as if this doesnt faze you, but all it does is prove that you're an NPC. You are such an NPC the moment you are confronted with something that is not programmed into you, you cannot even begin to understand it. You simply dismiss it, think its stupid or dumb, or you think its something you already have experience with and try to relate it to that. Funny actually, that meme that was posted here a while ago about "narrating NPCs thought processes" in terms of protocols actually perfectly demonstrates the point. Even when trying to explain the thought process of someone that does not use language to think, the guy rreferred to thinking in language boiled down to its most basic form, protocols. The NPC was depicted as someone who thinks in language (*initiate protocol whatever* for example), in its most basic form, proving that language thinking is actually what it is to be an NPC. It is literally impossible for some of you to understand what its like to think in a way you werent programmed to. I dont know of anything thats more NPC than that

comptuer plug into wall, computer take data from input computer process data. brain plug into body, brain take data from input brain process data. brain like computer.

I thought NPC's are not supposed to think at all but all I did was describe how unsymbolized thinking works

In any rate, I think in both unsymbolized and sub-vocalization, and in many respects the former is superior, faster, like speed reading but not just paragraphs, entire thoughts in your mind, grasped without needing words or pictures to accompany them to understand them, its beneficial for highly abstract thinking

Which study cited this? Was it peer reviewed?

nothing in this world is instant and thoughts do not spring out of nothingness there is a physical source to thoughts so they must be linked to something like words or symbols not just thoughts themselves that would be impossible.

meant for you wooops

Read the link in OPs post

>there is a physical source to thoughts

Oh really? Can you hold a thought? Can you weigh a thought? Can you measure a thought? Can you locate a thought in a brain hooked up the EEG or just detect the portion of the brain active when the thought is thought.

However can you perceive a thought? Yes. A thought can enter perception without any prior input or attempt at generating it, this is how the mind works. If you are an unsymbolized/concpetual thinker then the thought is perceived as you become consciously aware of it and is understood without any further attempt necessary of understanding or elucidating it internally

As this article so describes-
psychologytoday.com/us/blog/pristine-inner-experience/201111/thinking-without-words
>To qualify as an unsymbolized thought, the thought must be directly experienced, just as directly experienced as would be an inner speaking or the seeing of an image. That is, you don't merely infer the existence of an unsymbolized thought (I must have been wondering what Feature 5 is). If this is an unsymbolized thought, you directly apprehend the thought as an experience before the footlights of consciousness at the moment it is occurring.

The thought is "apprehended" before your conscious awareness and is not associated with any accompanying words or symbols but is nevertheless a coherent thought, idea or understanding which is fully understood and processed by the mind in an instant with no need to "internally narrate" the process, or experience associated mental imagery with it.

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Have you ever been looking for a word that you knew the meaning of, but couldn't remember the word itself?
If thinking wasn't possible without words or images, that wouldn't be possible. The concept and the word that describe the concept are separate, and it's possible to think them individually.

I dont get why you even bother explaining anything to these NPCs. This goes beyond their programing. They cannot understand it.

yes really, you can't think thoughts that are outside the frame of inputs or else they would have no bearing on anything and just be nonsense jibberish.

>you can't think thoughts that are outside the frame of inputs
N P C
P
C

theres a difference between describing the frame in which thinking occurs and not thinking at all. think about it

Wrong, what are these "frame of inputs" you describe? Symbols? Words? Pictures? This thinking method is just unsymbolized, just because you never experienced it doesn't mean I haven't when I am literally doing my best to describe the process and experience to you right now.

I think I would know more about my own meta-cognition than anyone else you see.

Anyways I spoke in great length about my thinking process in previous threads, see here

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You know, the senses? Your eyeballs and fingers, nerves?

>only being able to think in a certain fixed way
>that has been programmed into you
npc

>I'm FREE from my programming! Doosdaboos boogabah!!

Are born deaf people retarded? I would imagine so because how could they possibly have a complex thought?

You don't need those to think though what the fuck are you talking about

Yeah, thats what its like to not be an npc
>yfw when npcs break down once they realize that what they think made them not an npc is actually what makes them an npc
feels paradoxical man

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>Have you ever been looking for a word that you knew the meaning of, but couldn't remember the word itself?

So you have a visual idea of it but don't have a word, that doesn't contradict what I said. Words are just a proxy. You can not think about a carrot without having a visual/image of it

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If you want to understand symbolized thinking, think of it as a gui. Whenever I wanna think about what time it is, I visualize a clock.

You need them to have a frame of reference and to provide feedback to be able to consider the conesquences of an action, THINK about something. or else you would just be performing...
You cant think without a brain so you can't be think outside of how a brain thinks

that's only one sense, someone born with no senses would in fact be brain dead

You were born with a brain. You werent born knowing language. Language has been programmed into you

Words don't have to have a visual association. What about abstract concepts, like harmony, content, reality? even if you have a visual association for them, it can't describe the concept entirely. Is your understanding of the concept crippled until you remember the word?

so what? language is just a way for me to convey my thoughts to you.

Pray tell user what frame of reference does a person need for abstract thinking? When the entire point of abstract thinking is that it often lacks a recognizable frame of reference and concrete relation, hence why it is called abstract.

This is why unsymbolized/conceptual thinking is great for abstract thinking you don't require concrete things like words and images to understand and comprehend abstract ideas far removed from reality and everyday experience because your thinking is not limited to words and language and mental imagery, thoughts themselves can seem to have a sense of solidity to them and form, despite being formless.

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Damn well described user
>Is your understanding of the concept crippled until you remember the word?

This, this is why its called conceptual thinking. One can have the experience of an abstraction they are thinking about like reality, time, humanity, national spirit, etc... without needing to say to themselves the words themselves in order to understand that is what one is thinking about.

To be able to identify something as abstract, one must be able to understand what is concrete and to be able to separate the two. You can't know that a fantasy is a fantasy without knowing the limits of reality

>ITT: screeching brainlets who can't use all methods of thinking depending on situation, but still need to feel superior

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You seem to imply then that I lack that ability, that I lack both the capacity to think in the concrete and the abstract, that I can't tell apart reality from fantasy if that is so the case, well I don't, rest assured.

However conceptual/unsymbolized thinking can be beneficial in concrete everyday matters as well, take the example of getting up for a glass of water that I posted here for an insight into how it goes for me as a conceptual thinker-

>What about abstract concepts, like harmony, content, reality?
these are feelings, you obviously don't need visual associations for this but you need to know the feeling. Overall you need SENSORY association.

You know what's worse than being an NPC? Being a fucking mob. A critter that doesn't have any real ability to communicate at all. Just basic animal shit.

No, I'm saying that your ability to think abstractly is from modifying concrete. You need the concrete things to be able to have parts you can play with in the abstract

the scary thing is that there are people out there who don't sub-vocalize

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Why is this NPC meme upsetting the normalfags on this board?

see sub-vocalization is just a different method of thinking, it is NOT the only method of thinking

Did I claim that it was? No. You seem a little defensive there, buddy. But if you don't EVER sub-vocalize there's a significant chance you're a brainlet

So, basically every NEET.

I guess? I was referencing the people that don't sub-vocalize ever. Animals don't sub-vocalize.

Like I said earlier in the thread, I do both, but there was a time in my childhood - early teens I never sub-vocalized, I rarely heard an "inner voice" in my head yet never felt anything back then what that pic describes, somehow feeling "less conscious and soulless" no not once, thats my problem with this meme spreading around, people are ignorantly implying that anyone who doesn't primarily think in language, sub-vocalizing are somehow soul-less, NPC's which is fucking retarded.

Brainlet is he who cannot comprehend someone else's inner mental experience "qualia" can be markedly different from their own, even something as their primary method of thinking"

Were you ever in dangerous situation that required you to think very fast but still act consciously and not reflexively? In that moment i remember switching to unsymbolized thinking, it's like turbo boost to speed of processing information, when i compare it to vocalized thoughts, latter is mush slower.

That person describes that they didn't change themselves until after university. Their experience sounds significantly different than yours. Count yourself lucky you caught up by the time you were an early teen.

Well that's what I'm talking about. Every concept is associated with a "feeling", and non-verbal thought is possible using only those feelings. I think the root of the misunderstanding is that to me, feelings are internal, while sensations come only from outside stimuli, whereas you put them together.

>it's like turbo boost to speed of processing information
Pretty much, thoughts are processed "instantly", and if you learn to sub-vocalize afterwards then you can still process them like this but annoyingly the sub-vocalization follows, lagging along behind the already processed thought just slowing you down.

In the case of a primary unsymbolized/conceptual thinker it is not just in dangerous events where "instinct" takes over, it is just there as a normal process of thinking so less processing power and brain resources are wasted on follow up verbal dialogue.

Like if I want to get a glass of water cause I'm thirsty, I just get up and get it, but I have no associated dialogue or mental imagery of me getting the water, just an abstract sensation or thought and which is followed by the action of getting up and getting the water, once I process that is what I want to do, which all happens in miliseconds.

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like this user describes its like a feeling

actually someone else described it like that too in a different blog/article lemme find it

thebrainbank.scienceblog.com/2015/10/10/whats-going-on-in-your-head-the-science-behind-our-inner-voice/

>"I was wondering about my very minimal inner monologue after talking to my husband about it earlier this week. I find it incredible how most people seem to constantly be thinking in words/sentences. It sounds exhausting to me. I think in actions, visualizations, feelings, impulses and only really have a proper inner monologue when reading or writing. I never know internally what I'm about to say out loud (unless I force myself to do so, or if I'm nervous about talking in specific situations). Often my mind seems blank with no thoughts. I find meditation very easy."

holy shit this sounds like an NPC

No because NPC aka philosophical zombie sounds like this en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie

Stupid idiot

>Often my mind seems blank with no thoughts. I find meditation very easy

I'm starting to believe npcs are real

>Often my mind seems blank with no thoughts

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>he thinks peace of mind and inner calm = mindlessness and no awareness

I had to learn how to stop my inner voice because since around 19-20 i got problems with my sleep. I remember when i was 15 i could fall asleep with earphones and loud music playing, but now even my thoughts won't let me sleep. I have to force my mind to be absolutely blank, no visual images, no sounds, no thought, just nothingness and only then i can fall asleep. Also when i get music stuck in my head, i can stay awake whole night because this shit won't just shut up and keeps playing in my head again and again.
Can anyone relate?

Try meditation, its about not following along with your thoughts, so overtime you stop the habit of following them along the endless mental dialogue and you begin to cultivate moments where there is no thought, or thought is suppressed and you just feel pure awareness. This is likely what is being described here It makes sense that meditation would come easier to someone who does not naturally have an inner dialogue running in their heads 24/7, one then experiences pure moments of awareness much more often and has a mind that is free of distraction, more lucid and clear.

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What your describing is intuition and I wouldnt consider that to be an unsymbolized thought, its realized through pattern recognition.

Whatever it is, it is different from verbal thinking and picture thinking, feeling, intuition, conceptual, unsymbolized whatever the label, it is a distinct and separate method of thinking from the other methods, not a part of them, in the same way thinking with mental images without sub-vocalizing the words associated with those images is possible, only this method of thinking is both wordless and imageless.

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The brain is a part of the body. It's not plugged in. It literally is created inside the skull and hopefully never leaves it before death.
Also, the only data the brain is exposed to is of every sensory stimulus. Touch, sight, taste, sound, smell, etc.
Multiple part of the brain process this information in a way no one understand and something heavily distilled is presented to our consciousnesses.
Computers are nothing like this. They process only one type of data, ones and zeros, in a very deterministic way. We can debug them and see exactly what it is doing at which point.

Well said, there is also the automatic functions of the brain which among other things give a person the unique experience of being able to drive or walk somewhere performing all the motions barely being aware of them while your mind is consciously somewhere else entirely like thinking deep about something, while the unconscious processes perform the routine behavior freeing up the conscious part of the brain for other tasks

That behavior itself is unique to brains, no computer can operate that way, I really hate the brain as a computer misconception because its flawed and limited and leads to a limited and wrong understanding about how the brain functions.

The whole system of neurons and inter-related connections is also unique to brains and unlike how computers function, with stronger connections and more delineated neural pathways leading to stronger retention of associated memory, skill, idea, thought patterns etc, which is unlike how computers function.

Lets not even get into the differences between how computers and brains store and retrieve data too. The brain is so unlike a computer and to suggest otherwise is to insult the brain for it is far more powerful than any computer, with something to the order of a hundred trillion neurons

the brain is "plugged" into the body via central nervous system. The environment is experienced through by the senses in the form of signals sent from neuron synapses to brain kind of like binary code so in a way parts of our brains can be compared to parts in a computer trying to logically process data through the appropriate devices such as a gpu or cpu etc. Computers are not there yet but the comparisons can be made.

I want to give you a big hug and a pat on the cheek

Computers are like brains in the sense that both process some kind of data and both exist in this world.

Cars are like brains. They have multiple input (pedals, gas tank, oil, windshield washer, etc) and process this data with its brain (the motor). Different part of the motor process different input to produce an action in the world.
Cars are not there yet, but the comparison can be made.

You're right. Once cars are able to drive themselves, it would be hard to tell the difference between a self driven car and one with a brain driving it.

>npc memers
Are they an actual thing? I thought they were just pretending to be retarded.

You know where's the burden of proof sitting in this situation, champ.

>Unsymbolized Thinking

You mean imagination?

Looking at a black box and only seeing its output doesn't really tell us much about how the black box work. One black box has a computer, the other a human, and they give the exact same output for a given input. Hard to tell the difference indeed, but there is one nonetheless.
The set of possible input to both box is very limited. The human will also die and can't be made into an exact copy. The brain isn't fully understood, so trying to get a computer to act like a brain isn't going to be possible until we actually have a blueprint of it.
The computer only act, simulate. We watch a play of pixels and motorized actions performed for an audience of brains.
The same can't be said when we watch a human. A play of chemicals and muscular actions perhaps, but this play can't be unfolded fully like the one of a computer.

The point is that the brain is sufficiently understood enough to make a similar copy. Not exactly the same but enough to be compared to one another.

>The brain is so unlike a computer and to suggest otherwise is to insult the brain for it is far more powerful than any computer, with something to the order of a hundred trillion neurons
A single human brain has more switches than all the computers and routers and Internet connections on Earth

Damn I love facts like that.

>There are more stars in the universe than all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the planet Earth

Now what about brains and their switches and connections and neurons, they outnumber the stars, and thats just a single brain and there are billions of them on Earth holy fuck.

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No not the same thing. Let me give you an example.

When I imagine a fantasy or scenario I'm often "feeling it" happening more than seeing it, if that makes sense

>itt: a bunch of brainlets have never read Descartes

Claiming that everyone is conscious has just as much of a burden of proof. Assuming consciousness is ontologically basic, there are "people" who make claims like consciousness doesn't exist, which is perfectly consistent with some people being P-zombies.

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How do NPCs have more complex, "longer" thoughts without mentally vocalizing them? When programming for example I have a basic instinctive idea of how to do things but I find that vocalizing helps build a structure upon that, which I then fill out instinctively. Without this structure I would be rather aimless and try to solve problems on a small scale one by one but without seeing the big picture so to speak. Are NPCs just incapable of more advanced thought?

Conceptual thinking has the same "structure and framework" but without needing sub-vocalized thought accompanying it, you just sense it, like its raw thought or something but still understand it and can recall it

So, had you not been tought a human language, do you think you'd be currently engaged in conceptual thinking ?

How do you think deaf people think? I'm curious