Thought as a barrier to understanding
An excess of thought profits nothing. If thought were the natural outcome or effect, brought on by confusion, then the more you think, the more confused you will get. Does thinking therefore add anything to understanding, or does an absense of thought allow insight to arise? If intuition were the voice of reason, but it were quiter than the overbearing voice of thought, would you ever hear it. A room full of people talking all at once, creates a song, not a conversation.
Does understanding arise as a result of thought, or in the gaps between thoughts.
Does understanding arise as a result of thought, or in the gaps between thoughts.
Comments (53)
Popper takes a similar view of learning as eliminative of error in his perspective of scientific realism.
Since understanding is a kind of thought, this is nonsensical.
Thought is mental/brain activity with cognitive content. So is understanding. So is empathy and humility.
To phrase it differently, once you're not just talking "understanding" in the abstract and try to think of specific instances, you immediately get to: what are you are understanding? And badabing, badabum, you've got thought.
That's a nice example of a self-undercutting argument. If the premise is assumed, then everything that follows from it can be dismissed as confused ramblings. No need to go any further.
So, if your arguement held true, those spiritual masters who claim the importance of "no thought" would not attain understanding, because they are without thought - again, not so. Thought creates "distrubance" within what would otherwise be perfect understanding, or the grounds to create perfect understanding. All thought, words, etc are just distrubances.
Consider then what a vision is (not optical vision, but a vision in the mind). thought is not involved but understanding is present.
A couple of problems here:
If your entire counter argument boils down to "you're confused," then it's not only weirdly presumptive, it's pointless. Confused how, why, and about what exactly?
I'm not surprised, of course, that the person whose argument is that understanding happens without thought is also the person to not have any real arguments--those require thought.
I'm sure it is super convenient though to just wave off criticism by saying it's just a result of confusion. Saves you a lot of.... thinking. :wink:
Quoting Antidote
I haven't met a "spiritual master" yet who's impressed me much with his or her "understanding." I've read several books by so-called "spiritual masters" that have very much put me in doubt of their level of insight, to be perfectly honest.
Here's a challenge: give me some example, something specific, about which you think a person might gain understanding without thought.
Actually, what was said was Quoting Antidote As I follow this, understanding brings something into thought, so is a synthesizing function, not entirely thought, and not merely thought. And in some cases, thinking can impede understanding (examples were given, Zeigarnik effect).
Actually, he says:
Quoting Antidote
Precisely that. Artemis sees thoughts as the "ends" of the process, where it appears as the "beginnings" of the process, but to be moved beyond and past in order to gain the understanding, mere thought on its own and of itself becomes an obstacle or a distrubance. The order is, a thought occurs, the thought ends. Understanding appears. If thought comes back in, then understanding doesn't appear, because it was given no grounds in which to appear.
But as I was suggesting above (albeit in a tone of amusement, but I'll be serious now): the problem with theories that want to do away with thought in favor of some "other" kind of understanding is that they fail to give any coherent theory. There either never is a whole theory, or it just runs into contradiction after contradiction. It's not surprising, because they inherently desire to exempt themselves from the need to make sense. It's just another form of accepting Jesus as your Savior: you have to believe first and only on the basis of faith and then you'll see the light. Miraculously.
Wrong again.
I see thought as the process. Full stop.
Read Eckhart Tolle, Power of Now or New Earth. He most certainly understands this as having almost killed himself, had his eyes opened.
Quoting Artemis
Thought creates the confusion when its mistaken for understanding. Consider bump-starting a car. Thought its the initial push to get the car moving, but then it fires and propels itself. If you keep trying to push the car once its going, you would struggle and be confused as to why the car has sped off.
Understands WHAT?
Quoting Antidote
Understanding WHAT?
You are relating everything to thought still. Your point then is, if I cannot understand it with thought, or if it cannot be put into a form that thought can understand, then it is not coherent. The relating it to thought is not coherent.
Understanding in both cases that thought is the method creating the confusion. If you go beyond thought, you gain a greater understanding of yourself and the world you are in.
Give me an example.
If you can't tell me, it can't be all that clear or "understandable."
In your experience, have you ever known something that was not taught to you by another human being? Have you ever had a "flash of inspiration"? Have you ever been determined to find a solution to something, only to walk away from it and suddenly get the answer? Do you hear your voice of intuiton inside you? Have you ever "known" something you couldn't have known?
The examples cannot come from my experience because I cannot give you that. But you have a memory, therefore can you remember in your own experience a time when anything like this happened to you? How far back can you remember? Can you remember any of your early childhood?
Have you ever had a gap in your thinking, other than falling asleep and dropping below consciousness, instead of being awake and rising above it? Have you read any buddist material on negation?
Read the book, honestly even if its just a few pages and see what you think. If you object, listen to your objection, is it valid? What are you objecting to?
The buddist say, "Don't look at the finger pointing to the moon and mistake the finger for the moon". Sit quietly and contemplate this. What does it mean? Why is it so profound?
Why were ancient cultures more interested in listening to the heart, than the mind? What does that mean? Can you feel anything in your body? These things may help.
True, understanding is the flowering and brings something much greater into it. It is greater than the sum of its parts. Thought will always intrupt this process, so the skill is as understanding arises, don't try to grasp it, instead allow it to be and it will grow.
That makes no sense.
Quoting Antidote
So... he's not clear enough or sensible enough that you could just tell me. Gotcha. Sorry, no, I have a better reading list on my shelf.
In the end, all this is no better than any other religion preaching about needing to accept Jesus or whomever into their souls before you can really "see the light."
Is that what you're here for? To proselytize?
So, you're here to bequeath us all with your superior insight... How kind of you.
That's called proselytizing.
UNDERSTANDING, n. A cerebral secretion that enables one having it to know a house from a horse by the roof on the house. Its nature and laws have been exhaustively expounded by Locke, who rode a house, and Kant, who lived in a horse. [/quote]
The thing about this cerebral secretion, understanding, is that one can still understand the difference between a house and a horse even when one is not thinking about them. The secretion remains available should the occasion arise even when one is eating chocolate biscuits and watching tv.
So true, I read a similar thing in the Emerald Tablets of Thoth, saying "knowledge is regarded by the fool as ignorance, and the things that are profitable, are to him hurtful. He lives in death, it is therefore his food."
Yet another really convenient way to dismiss any and all critics. :brow:
Mathematical research problems are frequently resolved by diligent thought for a period of time, then relaxing the mind and going about one's daily routine, allowing the subconscious to produce results. However, the subconscious is not infallible and what bubbles up can be disappointing! :cool:
Can you give a reference to this claim, something beyond an Eastern religious doctrine? In my opinion, as humans we reach our potential not by avoiding an aspect of mind, but by living in a kind of balance between the various aspects.
Sorry, but I have to agree - in general - with here.
There is no understanding when thought is absent. All understanding is comprised completely thereof.
Creativesoul, thats absolutely fine, what do you have when thought is absent, for instance when a baby suckles, or a newly born fish swims? For a long time I had the same view, however looking at ego shattering experience or ego death, my view reversed. Each is entitled to their own opinion of course, variety is the spice of life.
Both. In a way I get what you’re trying to allude to: that thought is not understanding. But it’s not so much the rejection of thinking that allows for insight, but the broadening of the mind to include information beyond thoughts. Buddhist teaching advocates a clearing of the mind in order to gain awareness of the wealth of information available in each moment, and to recognise that the mind does not consist only of thoughts - but in no way does it suggest that thinking adds nothing to understanding.
Thinking enables us to conceptualise reality in relational structures well beyond our sensory experience of the present moment. But it is information from an ever-changing present moment, and with it a humble recognition that these relational structures of ours are limited and prone to prediction error, that enable us to continually improve our understanding.
It is in relating to what lies beyond our thinking - not in reducing our thinking - that promotes understanding. This means increasing awareness, connection and collaboration with what we consider to be ‘unthinkable’: inclusive of improbable, illogical, irrational and immoral possibilities. The information these relations provide is vital to a more accurate understanding of reality.
All thought is information, but not all information is thought.
On the other hand we don't have to choose in general between these two things. We can think and do other things in different moments. In fact watching, trying, and self-reflecting over the result is an incredible sequence for learning many things. There are other wonderful combinations.
Well, Aristotle did make a big deal of finding the so-called golden mean and if one subscribes to the basic idea behind it then both there exists such a thing as excess of thought and such excess of thought is bad.
What is excess of thought and how is it bad or why is it that it, in your words, "profits nothing"? Taking account of the fact that thinking animals is thought to be an apt description of humans, I don't see how any amount of thinking would be counterproductive or bad. Perhaps it's some kind of culutural conditioning but I've heard people say things like, "we didn't get enough time to think through this" and "not enough thought was given to the matter", as if to say that, setting aside the issue of time which I'll get to later, the real problem was not that there was an excess of thought but actually a deficiency of thought. In other words, the idea of an excess of thought appears incoherent in certain situations.
That said, there's the time dimension to life that we need to consider. Everything we do comes at a cost we've to meet in the currency of time. Since we have to divvy up our time between activities, thinking might be problematic if we do it at the cost of other activities in life. Thus, in a temporal sense, there can be such a thing as excess of thought, something done with disregard to other aspects of what counts as a life.
Perhaps you mean something else - that there's an inherent flaw in thinking itself that becomes apparent especially when we do it in excess. All I can say in that regard is to quote an exchange between Bohr and Einstein:
Einstein: Alas, our theory is too poor for experience
Bohr: No, experience is too rich for our theory
In the sense excess thought profits nothing, is related to this topic title. The more thought there is, the less understanding there is. If understanding arises by negation or absence, then the more thought there is, the less understanding there is. For example, if you have a garden thats full of weeds, theres no room to grow fruit and veg. Thats not staying thought is not useful, its excessive thought that is unproductive.
Adding time into this muddys the water further. Granted, people do say they didnt have time for this or that, and present this as a reason for why the goal was not achieved, but was this challenged? Did anyone look at what the time was actually spent on. When ever time or money are used for reasons not to do something, usually this occurs as a clever excuse not to try in the first place, or to justify having spent the time in distraction and not on the problem at hand. Not always, but often and depending on the reason for the excuse. Once i was told, use the 5 whys. Whatever you are given as a reason, in response ask why. By the 5th time you will arrive at the real why, if not before.
In terms of time, again, it could be seen as an obstacle, or an illusion. Eckhart Tolle explains this fantastically, but i will attempt a poor repetition. Clock time, your watch time, does exist, but in the same way a tape measure exists. If you apply it to anything, then it has meaning. Without an object of relativity it becomes pretty pointless. All we really have is now, right now, this moment. You can say X happened in the past or will happen in the future, but either way when you think about it or remember it, you do so, in the now, this present moment. Consider anything in your life that didn't happen in the present moment? Nothing ever happens unless it is in this moment now. That said, eternity does exist, but it is this moment that is eternal. It takes quite some contemplating to really feel this, but once the penny drops, it is one of the big obstacles overcome.
If we create a frame of reference for ourselves, then everything after that point is within that frame of reference. If I imagine time as real i am trapped within the frame of reference called time. Time changes not, but all things change in time. Look for time, where will you find it? Yes, there is evidence of its effect if you ascribe the effect to time, but you wont find time. Dismantle a clock, you wont find time. It doesnt exist.
Absolutely right, there is an inherent flaw in thinking, i couldnt have put it better. Again, its the frame of reference. If thinking is the frame of reference, then everything following it has to remain in the frame of reference. Decates said, "i think therefore i am", framed thinking within thinking. He should have said, "i think i think, therefore i think i am". It has a place for sure, just like a starter motor has a place on a car. But you cant drive your car on the starter motor (well I guess you can but it will be painfully slow progress, and the starter motor will burn out).
I like the quote, it points to exactly this. Our experience is too rich for theories. Well of course it is, experience is not a theory. All is vibration, so it always was, so it always will be.
Driver: the starter motor is too slow to complete this 10,000 mile journey (moving at half a mile an hour)
Co-driver: No, the distance is just too far.
Everything on the outside is a reflection, therefore its all appears backwards. Look at your image in a mirror. Then look at a photograph of yourself, they dont match.
The problem here is not excess thought, it’s how we perceive prediction error, which is experienced as humility, pain, loss or lack. We generally refer to this as suffering, and we do our best to avoid it.
But prediction error is simply a recognition that how we conceptualise or think of reality doesn’t correspond to our sensory experience of the present moment. It’s a challenge to find the energy, attention and effort to process this new information at the time because the body operates on limited resources, which have already been allocated in advance. Do we hold onto our concepts as they are, or do we adjust them to accomodate this new information?
Anxiety, unease or full-blown panic attack occurs when we don’t recognise the internal negative affect from prediction error as our sensory experience challenging the concepts we use to make these predictions. Interoception of negative internal affect interprets this new sensory information from the present moment as the cause and therefore an imminent physical threat, and prepares the system accordingly. Instead of allocating energy to integrate the new information, the body allocates energy to generate a fight-or-flight response to this ‘offending’ information.
On humility, I see this in a young child who is encouraged to say sorry. They struggle to start with and will refuse. But, once they do it, and do it a few times, they then understand the benefit to it, and then they offer "a sorry" before you ask them. That is of course, if you explain what the sorry is for, and why it is necessary. If you just get them to "parrot" a sorry, then it has no value other than to appear like a nice thing to do - an etiquette.
It may well be we have a different understanding of the words, because I will be completely honest, I don't know what "prediction error as our sensory experience" means to you, as it suggests that perhaps your senses gave you false information? I'm not sure I follow. Again, I don't understand a lot of it, but as another example, "Instead of allocating energy to integrate the new information, the body allocates energy to generate a fight-or-flight response to this ‘offending’ information." Are you suggesting that there is not enough energy in the system to understanding something? The body has not allocated any energy in my understanding from or to the "fight or flight" response, because this is a release of hormones into the blood, excreted from the adrenal glands? Has energy been diverted from somewhere else to make the glands work? I don't know. I'm sorry, I'm not being facetious, I just don't completely follow the words. I'm pretty sure its just our difference in understanding of the combination of words.