What is thinking without words like?

Thinking in pictures, are words in images you could say. Sounds are picture's too, for some. As to what it is like, it is difficult to put in to words, but if you can just imagine . . . . . . 

Everyone thinks. The mind is extremely complex. It isn't just about words.

This is an interesting video related to your topic of discussion: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-B_ONJIEcE

There are a lot of people who can think without words.

Many schools of meditation advocate silence, not just outer silence but inner silence, just listening and quieting the internal voice. with regular practice this is fairly easy to achieve for a short time.

I also find it easy to be silent when hillwalking or looking at a sunset or the night sky,

awareness and wonder and beauty can make words pointless and annoying.

There are many interesting psychological experiments that indicate that thinking and decisions are often made without verbal reasoning and our impression that we made a decision logically is a delusion generated in the language centers of the brain, that often have little or no relevant input while the decision is made but simple make up an explaination afterwards.

For example experiments on suggestion where the size of a plate or the type of drink offered can influence a later decision. Usually the subject gives a logical reason for the decision that is unrealted to the condition that influenced them.

For these and other reasons I believe verbal thought is largely an illusion generated by the brain for social reasons.

As a chessplayer I try to think without words,

basically up until the morern era in chess, say 1985 ish,

the theory was you thought in plans and strategies, that could be expressed in verbal rules, eg put the knights in the middle, attack on the side you have the advantage, etc.

With the rise of computers these rules are now seen as redundant and it was a big surprise to many people that these rules are totally useless and even a hinderance to computers and accurate calculation of variations, that is totally nonverbal, is the way to go.

So now the top players no longer think with words and plans, they work at a nonverbal level and it works very well.

Einfallspinsel said:

I once heard somebody casually say that a deaf-mute or autistic person could not possibly be thinking or understanding anything, because they didn't know any words. Without words, what would they be thinking? Nothing! It would be like a newborn baby's brain.

My first reaction was that this is nonsense. Don't people often have thoughts without words? (Isn't that what intuition is supposed to be like?) And when we were babies, were we not thinking? We were admitedly thinking in a different way than after we learned speaking. Don't babies think a lot about edibility and patterns and senses?

So, does anybody remember what thinking without words is like, and can put it in words? (I know I know, it's as bad as "googling for google", the world will implode!)

I would spontaneously describe it as a Venn diagram of memories.

And by "memory" I don't mean one word, rather... an associated set of sensory information, which may include moods/emotions, but not necessarily time. And by Venn diagram I mean thoughts such as "A and B can/must happen together" or "A and C rarely/never happen together".

Hard to describe, I'm not satisfied with my description. Anyone have anything better?

Instinct, sight, smell, physical touch, vibrations, and so forth.  

 Not everyone who is deaf and mute remains so.  I recall reading about the case of Helen Keller - en.wikipedia.org/.../Helen_Keller

As a visual-kinesthetic thinker I often think without words, however at the point I need to communicate them (even if only to myself), they get translated into words.

I can't put into words what it's like though, other than to say that, when I am thinking in that mode, my thoughts have shape, colour, and texture.

What an interesting question. I agree that infants make connections between co-occuring sensory information and internal emotions, and they extract patterns of co-occurance.  For people that learn speech and language the early memories are reorganised into new "formats" and the early "raw" memories are not available to conscious access, though the memories still exist and can still evoke emotions and sensations (memory of sensory experience). I think the problem with the Venn diagram as a description is that it has very clear boundaries whereas I think the mental collections have fuzzier boundaries which can change over time.

Even people with speech and language can think in other ways which can be just as symbolic as verbal language e.g. University level mathematics - they don't have to translate all their thinking into speech (and it has the satisfaction of being more precise!).  Thinking in visual imagery is also quite common. I think that infants probably start developing unified concepts before speech. The abilty to attach shared labels to these concepts accelerates conceptual development, but it occurs even without speech. They may still develop symbolic thinking.

My (speculative) view is they would not think of a 'blue banana' not because they could not combine these two visual images but because without some one suggesting it there would be no imputous to do so, why would they?  That doesn't mean they would have no imagination, I think they would be able to imagine 'objects' not present and to image future events. In this view they would be able to combine representation in novel ways but I think the range of possibilites that would occur (rather than could occur) would be more rooted in experience.

Language, of course, is not the same as speech.  Sign languages are just as valid as verbal language and there are people (including a 14 year old autistic blogger) who have a verbal language without speech.  I think some of the frustration and anger expressed by people with "low function" autism is because some have more ability to think than is recognised but they cannot communicate it.

Awareness has many eyes,, talk/thought/emotion is just series of abstract concepts held in wind spiral basket(like a bee hive with honey bees wisping about) around the atomic body,,, so in real reality they not exist as thoughts are just concept, so we can seperate the whole up into perception realities and call it "living", but the whole is already, this seperate realities are held in the atomic body as MEME(energy) thus memory. So, if you are mindless,, you are whole. Hence, in Japan new born Babies are worshipped as Gods.