> One thinks in words
No. There are people who believe they think in words, because they haven't bothered to examine the question, but there are no people who think in words.
Think about the number of people you've ever seen do a double take at the idea that "I don't know how to put this into words".
https://www.theverge.com/2016/4/25/11501230/blake-ross-cant-...
If there are people who can’t picture and people who don’t have an inner dialogue, I think it lends more credence to the idea that we don’t have free will and are just a bunch of chemicals controlling our behavior. It also makes you think about consciousness and whether it’s even real.
I bet you can answer all of these at a moment's notice, but where does your answer come from? Have you ever sat down and tried to reason out which one you like more? Or do you just 'know' the answer and then 'come up' with the justification afterwards?
People can think in words, but it's certainly not their only way of thinking. I think the thinking in words is kind of like "thinking on paper" where you're trying to explicitly reason through something. The thinking process itself seems to be something on a deeper level.
I'm sure you think that way too, you probably just layer a narrative over it. The sibling comment about picking up a spoon is an example I sometimes use - see yourself walk to the kitchen, move your hand to open the drawer, pick up a spoon, pour the tea, scoop the sugar. I can describe them but it's not natively linguistic to me.
I'm hell at rearranging furniture or putting together an engine, not so good at positive self talk.
From that perspective, the experience of thinking in words or pictures is distinct from actually thinking in words or pictures. Saying one thinks in one of these ways seems to be saying what they identify thinking with.
For example, I don't usually think of fantasy as thinking. If I day dream, I wouldn't say I am thinking, but that is fairly visual. To what degree am I saying something about myself vs my identity if I say I do or don't think in words given that context?
Relatedly, I've noticed that when it comes to remembering something, it is not 'I' that remember. Rather 'I' set up mental cues and direct focus, which then hopefully causes the memory to be placed within my awareness. This happens below the level of direct experience. But I might say I failed to remember, taking responsibility for something that 'I' - the part separated from the automatic functions of the body - did not do.
So I'm suggesting statements about words vs pictures are about ego, metaphor and meaning-building, and not about actual mechanisms or communicating actual differences in the experience of thinking.
It can be difficult to talk about these things because such conversations implicitly occur between our identities, not between who we actually are - something beyond our grasp - and the noise this introduces is something I don't know how to surmount, or if it can be surmounted.
One of the more cliche, and not super useful tests, is “imagine a ball on a table, someone pushes the ball and it begins to roll. What color is the ball?” For me that was a revelatory statement because I’d never consider that others might give the ball a color, or size, or texture as the imagine it. I assume not everyone with the ability to visualize does but it seems like many do according to the literature. To me it’s just a statement, a ball is rolling pushed by a nondescript person.
French is my first language, I'm fluent in English, and I know a bit about many languages... But I've never had an inner voice or thought in language, even when I was very young.
I’m not willing to die on this hill by the way so if someone else comes along and argues otherwise, I’m open to other ideas.
With actual vision, there's a pipeline of steps: light hits actual cone/rod cells -> optic nerve fires -> brain stage 1 -> brain stage 2 -> brain stage 3... where each of those stages also have various side effects associated with the experience of "seeing"
I can't synthesize "brain stage 1" at all I don't think, I need my optic nerve to send some signals to "see". But I think I might be synthesizing "brain stage 2" when I imagine seeing e.g. a red apple in a pretty similar way to actually seeing it - I can feel "red apple vibes" but there is no image of a red apple my field of view. My brain state certainly contains some data about the color of the imaginary apple and the shape of it, but it's not nearly the same as actually seeing it.
This is all astonishingly hard to explain in a way that communicates accurately between two people though.
The most notable difference is if you ask me to imagine something, there isn’t any detail in the “image” that I haven’t intentionally placed there. “Imagine the face of a stranger you haven’t met before; what color are their eyes?” Idk, I can add eye color to the image, but I certainly can’t just observe it, because both before and after it’s just the concept, not like a picture I can just look at.
Except for this part of thinking, paradoxically.
Is "just" a synonym for "exactly" in this context?
I've always thought of my mental model as an endless conversation with myself, but I think the more fitting description would be a "smooth" series of thoughts which only materialize into language when I explicitly focus on those thoughts as their own thing.
I do also think visually for things that have a visual component though.
Same thing happens if you ask “what surface is the table on” or “what country is this image in”. It’s layers I can add to the mental state, but if they’re not important they’re just not there.
I’d say the closest thing to what I was “seeing” before the color question is something like a wireframe, or maybe the gray color of a Blender model without colors/textures applied. Grey in the sense that you don’t really notice it’s grey, you just understand the grey color means color is absent.
Language certainly helps shape thoughts, even to the extent that, certainly for older kids and adults, different languages influence and constrain thought in different ways.
But consider dreams. These are adjacent to thoughts, and don't require language. Some dreamers are even able to express will not only on their actions, but over the dream itself. And if proof were needed of a conscious agent, it's there even in an apparently unconscious being.
"Clearly" because exterior stimuli clearly influence both thinking and feeling, a concept supported by common experience and scientific understanding of human cognition and emotions.
https://www.livescience.com/does-everyone-have-inner-monolog...
It seems more likely that a theory that bases being an intentional agent on the notion of an inner monologue is not the best model for what's happening.
I suspect people who say they think in language are not really thinking "in" language. I think we all have this abstract conceptual space in us. I'm not even sure what it means to think in language; where do the ideas and concepts come from that are being expressed? I guess some people have to internally "hear" a thought expressed before it is real to them.
You think "I will wash the dishes". You wash the dishes. Ta-daa, free will!
A paralyzed person thinks "I will raise my hand". Nothing happens. No free will!
An ADHD person says to themself "I will wash the dishes". They don't get washed. A different part is broken than to the paralyzed person, but the result is the same.
A lazy person says to their roommate "I refuse to wash the dishes". Free will? They "could", if they were not lazy. Just as the ADHD person "could" if they did not have executive dysfunction. Just as the paralyzed person "could" if their spinal cord were intact.
"Free will", as a philosophical construct, is nothing more than an attempt by the ego to regain a sense of control in the face of the irrefutable realization that the universe is governed by rigid laws, and we are made of universe. (And no, quantum randomness doesn't help you - a random choice is hardly more of an extension of will than a deterministic one).
When forced to dereference a color, it felt like an entire system was booted up. Not only did the ball have color, it also had specular reflections. There was lighting. The table gained an abstract sense of having texture.
What I find particularly fascinating is that my mind also assigned "red". I wonder if that is a coincidence, or a deep reflection of something about how brains work. Supporting evidence: in languages with only three words for color, the three colors are "light", "dark", and "red": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_term#Stage_II_(red)
I spent 45 years or so thinking people were talking metaphorically when talking about picturing things, because surely they couldn't actually see things while awake?
I see things when I dream, so I know what it is like, and some years ago I had a single experience during meditation I've never managed to replicate, but otherwise nothing while awake.
You (and I) have no idea if the universe is or not a computer. If you don't see the connection of free will to error margin of a deterministic system then I'm not sure how else to put it. Just imagine a deterministic program getting a bit flipped by a cosmic ray and turning non deterministic and apply that to the universe's system of laws.
Cosmic rays are just an example to explain that there's external causes of non-determinism to a deterministic system. Another example I gave above was the limit of precision of the system itself, allowing for "free will" (meaning something which isn't perfectly explainable by just the laws+starting conditions).
To me it's obvious the universe is deterministic, but the fun part is imagining ways in which it might not be. Comparing the universe to a computer is a fun way to think about it.
For me when someone asks “What color is it?” I think to myself “I don’t know you’re the one telling the story you tell me.”
Firstly, a person suffering from ADHD can do the dishes, despite the odds being against them. And a paralyzed person can raise their hand, given advances in technology.
And these are bad examples, as being incapacitated isn't an argument against free-will. The paralyzed still wants to raise their hand, even if they are unable at the moment. And the far more difficult question is if that want was entirely predetermined by the universe or not.
Quantum randomness and the huge number of variables at play point to the fact that believing that we don't have free-will is a non-falsifiable notion.
Consider this thought experiment: God comes to you and says ... "Here are 2 universes you can observe, one in which people have free-will, and another, that looks similar, but its people are just sophisticated automatons. Make an experiment to say which is which."
Your irrefutable argument quickly falls apart because there's no way you can show any relevant evidence for it. And it's worse than talking about the absence of God, because we experience free-will everyday. It's like talking of consciousness — we can't define it yet, but we know it's real, as we're thinking and talking about it. And a theory being non-falsifiable does not make it false. God could exist and you could have a soul.
You may or may not believe in free-will. But not believing in free-will is dangerous because it makes one believe that everything is predestined, so there's no point to doing anything, no point in struggling to achieve anything, no point in trying to escape your condition. If no free-will is possible, does life have any value at all? And that's the actual philosophical bullshit.
What color was the ball? I didn't have to think; I knew it was red. However, I can't tell you much about the cabinets or the arm or body attached to the hand. Totally unrendered and void.
EDIT: This is a great article about Ed Catmull and aphantasia: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-47830256
I wouldnt think the fairly self evident assertion that exterior stimulus changes both the internal state of a person as well as their behavior would be controversial.
At this point in history "free will" is really just the god of the gaps and those gaps shrink every year. Its probably a useful religious concept but as far as reality goes its the least interesting question one could ask about the whole human experience.
Because, and this may shock you: we are not all the same person
You make an excellent point that people respond differently to a given stimulus. This is explained by those people having had different genetics, environments, upbringings and even breakfasts leading up to the point of the test. It has been demonstrated that your metabolic state will vastly change your response to stimuli throughout a day.
I ate something different for breakfast today than yesterday because one sounded tastier than the other. I made this decision not because I have an eternal soul making randomized decisions like a roulette machine but because yesterday I craved salty food and today yogurt sounded better. I am different person today than I was yesterday. My gut, brain and everything else has been changed by all the stimulus I experienced yesterday and is now influencing my responses today.
This seems like a rather recursively self-referential problem.
You actually cannot just say "Man, the universe is so complicated, so it is possible it could be anything!"
That's a non-sequitur and not sound reasoning or logic.
Private experiences may be very important for individuals and like I said elsewhere, free-will is certainly a useful idea in religious contexts. I do not believe this has any bearing on practical matters such as our ability to predict or understand the actions taken by any given system such as humans or computers.
Sometimes people seem to not be sure how to describe the experience of thinking... Which I suppose explains a lot! /laughs
I have some experience with a meditative/dissociative state in which that monologue - which I think of as the "narrator process" - can be observed as just one of many mental subsystems, neither containing the whole of my consciousness nor acting as the agent of my will. The narrator merely describes the feelings which arise in other mental components and arranges them, along with the actions I take, into some plausible linear causal sequence.
Minds differ in many ways, and perhaps one way your mind and mine differ is that words flow quickly for me and do not feel slow or limiting; so I suppose I am easily fooled into perceiving that narrative as the medium of thought in itself. It had not occurred to me to describe the activities of the other mental subsystems as thoughts, but why shouldn't they be? And now I have a better guess at what it might be like to experience the world in a different way. Thank you!
Like, where are the details of how you are "measuring" these things? And what measurement instrument returns values like "is clearly" and "is really just"? I can think of only one.
Yes what I am describing is my opinion which I have formed from looking at evidence. My opinion isnt really a measurement in the sense that one can measure activity in parts of a brain with an MRI. It is really just the state of the system.
I'm not really interested in abstract epistemological definitions of free will because they arent useful in the way that neurology psychology and biology are generally. I am interested in predicting or explaining behavior or observations mostly. You might be interested in that kind of exploration which is great! If you think it does have bearing on such things I am totally interested in hearing how.
Are you saying that these two claims have some sort of scientific ~proofs:
1.Thinking isn't even a path to "free will".
2a. Thinking is pretty clearly determined by exterior stimulus
2b. just like feeling is.
Note: a definition for "determined by" (in percentage of total causality) would be required in the specification, as would a non-ambiguous definition for "just like".
Have you an opinion on whether your opinion is necessarily true?
> If you think it does have bearing on such things I am totally interested in hearing how.
I happen to believe humans have > 0 free will, and that if we do it derives from cognition, at least primarily. If this is the case, I believe that it would be advantageous to be able to exert control over cognition on demand. I also believe that doing something often requires trying to do it, and that if one doesn't think something can be done, it decreases the chances that one will try to do it, in turn decreasing the chances that it gets done.
I believe this to be > 0 "true", and that it has extremely broad applicability.
I guess what I am asking is what is causing you to exert control over cognition? I would say its the sum of too many variables to count (including previous states of the system) acting on you to cause you, the system to be in such a state that that is just what it does. Given enough time and resources we could probably come up with a half decent accounting of the most important of those variables and be able to explain why the system is doing a given thing. In this example that means explaining why the system is modifying its own state in some way. What would you say is the cause?
> Have you an opinion on whether your opinion is necessarily true?
Yes my opinion is that my opinion is likely true as I believe it is supported by evidence. I would bet on it but I am not certain about it.
No. I think this statement is a conclusion only indirectly supported by scientific fact. This is a logical leap from more and more behaviors and internal states being correlated with various external stimulus over time. I believe it only a matter of time until it becomes entirely possible (though silly and will likely not be done because it only serves to prove a foregone conclusion and would be a unfathomably huge undertaking) to provide a complete accounting of all the factors that influence a system bringing it to the state where it reacts in a given way to some stimulus.
The only other conclusion I can see is that human beings are not deterministic and there is some magical spark IE everlasting soul making randomized decisions for us.
If you're on HN, I assume this hasn't impacted you academically?
I use the term "visualize" because that is what I thought people meant when they said to visualize or imagine things. I remember the shape of the visual rendition of source code, for example, and that is usually the basis for how I navigate large code bases. And I know what parts of papers I last read 30 years ago look like, but I can't see them.
I think the biggest way it has impacted me is that e.g. when it comes to fiction, I find visual descriptions of things usually bore me unless the language used in itself is particularly compelling because the words themselves are beautiful to me. So I often skip and skim visual descriptions.
Can you expand on this "supported by" scientific fact? Is it something more than is not inconsistent with, and more towards must be, necessarily?
Can you explain how it is not? As I see it, my theory is directly breaking out of determinism.
> I guess what I am asking is what is causing you to exert control over cognition?
Consciousness (self-awareness, will & determination, etc...the "how" of which I make no claims of knowledge about). I absolutely agree that it is substantially out of our control and thus at least semi-deterministic, where we would differ (at least) is on the 100% part.
There are many problems, here are some:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decidability_(logic)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necessity_and_sufficiency