John, List: > On Feb 16, 2017, at 7:17 AM, John Collier <colli...@ukzn.ac.za> wrote: > > From talking with colleagues, some say they think only in words and others, > like me, say they think mostly in diagrams or in physical feelings that I > attach no words to (and probably couldn’t in many cases). Although I am > surprised when I find someone who believes they think in words only, I have > little reason to doubt them, as it seems these people also think quite > differently from me. One of the hardest things for me in learning analytic > philosophy (after original training and work in physics) was to think in > words. Dick Cartwright helped me immensely with this. > > Surely it is a psychological issue, if people differ so much in this respect
In my opinion, this topic of how different individuals “think”, that is, relate their experiences to their symbolic representations is a critical issue, a highly critical issue. Do readers of this list serve have favorite modes of thinking? And how closely connected are modes of thinking with modes of explanation? If one reads much in the philosophy of science, one finds a wide range of claims about how we experience the molecular dynamics of brain function. Usually biased toward one method or another. It is a topic that cuts across disciplines. It cuts across logical forms. It cuts across visualizations of abstractions. I have run an inquiry into this topic with numerous friends and colleagues, simply asking if they think in words, or pictures or equations, or “emotions”. One of my hypotheses is that philosophers tend to think in words and struggle with pictures or geometry. Particular in drawing diagrams among arguments. This severely constrains communications between scientists and philosophers of science. Another hypothesis is that chemists almost always think in terms of pictures (images) or diagrams. It appears that this skill is essential to represent relations. Mathematicians vary widely in answering my query - it appears to be correlated to the domain of study. Often, first class mathematicians are extremely skilled with diagrams but stumble on the simplicity of chemical diagrams because the logical pre-suppositions do not correspond with the mathematical notions of relations. In any case, I find it useful to try to understand the mode of thinking of colleagues because it is often useful in facilitating communication and selecting the mode of explanation. Cheers Jerry
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